For Terrestrial Planet Finder, five spacecraft, flying in formation about one kilometer apart, will function as an optical interferometer.
The Laboratory has an on-going program developing techniques such as the shearing interferometer, including data processing methods.
Furthermore, because virtually all materials change a solvents refractive index, the interferometer can detect samples containing no natural chromophores.
Step scan permits the separation of the dynamics of scanning the interferometer from the dynamics of the chemical event to be measured.
This process keeps the interferometer accurately aligned in real time, as the interferometer accurately aligned in real time, as the interferometer is scanning and also while it is idling between scans.