This is just an idea I am toying around with however I fear I lack the electronics knowledge.
Very little infrared actually penetrates the atmosphere; the atmosphere would tend to spread it out, absorb and dilute any signal.
Ok... so what would this be for then?
An IR observatory would be awesome for observing atmospheric phenomena!
There are some interesting and little-studied phenomena occuring in our upper atmosphere which I would like to investigate. I am talking about the formation of sprites and other such clouds, with regards to voltage/electron potential differences, in the stratosphere.
Of course that would include UFO-Orb phenomena. Sprites and other objects breaking off the magnetic field. I used Jacques Vallee's ideas, and research, to come up with a physical model and explanation for the UFO phenomena. In short, what might be occurring is that the magnetic field is being split, trigonometrically into three night-time waves based on the interaction of Earth-internal Sun and Real Sun in the splitting of photonic-magnetic beams based on the results of the double split experiment into Vallee's Triplet. I think i'm the first one to realise this, based on Vallee's work. He never actually conceptualised his observation of a night-time triplet as a tail emerging from the central Sun!
Check out the video here, with links included in the description!