A firm engaged in the development of new optical technologies for scientific, industrial and medical applications
A new instrument know as
"Advanced Ionospheric Monitor using a High sensitiviy Imager" (AIM-HI)
will be developed as an instrument with such features as light-weight, low power, high sensitivity & high resolution not matched by any other sensors. This effort is being funded under a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
Members of the ALO team are:
James L. Tom has been involved in the development of science payload instruments on many NASA satellite missions and was the founder of several high-tech start-up companies developing scientific and medical products.
Two products are currently available on the Internet..
A number of new products have been developed for commericalization. Among them are Fuel Cells and Rechargeable Batteries
for the Military and Aerospace industry. Also the World's first commerical Cyclotron for use in Cancer Treatment, production of Medical Isotopes and for Physics Research.
Dr. Supriya Charkrabarti is Director of the Center for Space Physics at Boston University, authored or co-authored over 150 scholarly articles, developed and launched a small satellite (known as TERRIERS) carrying five EUV/FUV spectrographs, supervises Ph.D dissertations and involved in many NASA related research and development projects.
Dr. Timothy Cook has extensive experience in developing laboratory data acquisition and control software for calibration of space flight and optical systems. He also designs a number of FUV, EUV and soft X-ray instruments at Boston University.
The study phase and development of the AIM-HI project started in early 2007
A concept drawing of the instrument is shown at the left. Updated information
and photos will appear as the project progresses..
The TERRIERS satellite, built by students at Boston University and launched April 1999. It was not able to orient itself so that its solar panels fully face the sun and seems to have run out of battery power.
The IMAGE spacecraft was launched from Vandenberg AFB on March 25, 2000. IMAGE is the first satellite mission dedicated to imaging the Earth's magnetosphere, the region of space controlled by the Earth's magnetic field and containing extremely tenuous plasmas of both solar and terrestrial origin.
James L. Tom provided concept design on 2 of the instruments.
SOHO, the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory, is a project of international collaboration between ESA and NASA to study the Sun from its deep core to the outer corona and the solar wind. SOHO was launched on December 2, 1995.
James L Tom was involved in support of 2 of the 12 instruments on board the SOHO provided by European and American scientists
Pegasus is a three-stage rocket which is carried aloft by an L-1011 "Stargazer" aircraft to approximately 40,000 feet over open ocean where it released the TERRIRES satellite into orbit.
ALO, Inc. is currently engaged in the design of the next generation space-based Far UltraViolet (FUV) imaging sensors to monitor the ionosphere.
The Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE), a NASA explorer class satellite mission,
was launched on June 7 1992 and it operated till January 31 2001.
James L. Tom was Project Engineer for the EUVE science payload instruments.
Below are some of the NASA missions that ALO members have participated in
FUSE, Far Ultraviolet Spectrographic Explorer, is a NASA supported astrophysics mission that was launched on June 24, 1999 to explore the Universe using High-resolution spectropy in the Far-Ultraviolet region.
James L. Tom prvovided mechanical and system engineering support in collaboration with various team members at Johns Hopkins University as the program evolved.
Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration
