SPACE EXPLORATION
‘Tat was state-of-the-art technology. Now you can find it in mobile phones’
Te sensor was to be used for extreme UV
imaging, so the chip couldn’t be illuminated from the front, as the radiation would have been absorbed by the glass cover layers. ‘We had to thin the device and illuminate from the backside,’ he said. ‘At the time, we thought this was a good opportunity to learn to develop that [backside illumination] technology – it was around 2010, 2011 and BSI was really new, and we thought this is a way that we can learn how to make it and also execute the project.’ Te flight devices were made and the
The first colour image, captured by a CMV20000 sensor, to be sent back by the hazard cameras on the Perseverance rover after landing on Mars
g Teledyne Imaging also has a lot of
expertise in designing sensors that will withstand exposure to radiation and temperature extremes, as well as vibration from launch and landings. Teledyne e2v, Dalsa and Imaging Sensors business units offer back-thinned backside illuminated CMOS and CCDs, as well as infrared HgCdTe detectors, among other technologies for space applications. One of Teledyne e2v’s largest ongoing
space projects is a new design of detector for the Plato space telescope – Planetary transits and oscillations of stars – being built by the European Space Agency. Plato, due to launch in 2026, will look for exoplanets, planets orbiting around other stars. ‘It’s [Plato] a really huge focal plane, so they [ESA] want a big detector,’ Jerram said. Te instrument will have the largest digital combined camera ever flown in space, with
a field of view covering an area of the sky of approximately 2,250 square degrees and a resolution of 2.12 gigapixels. Each of Teledyne’s CCDs for this telescope
measure around 8 x 8cm – 4.5k x 4.5k pixels – with an 18µm pitch. CCD wafers start off at a size of six inches, and for Plato the detector fills almost all of the wafer, Jerram said. ‘Tat’s an example of a project that’s taken 15 years from start to finish,’ he added. Technology for space has a long
development cycle. Meynants said that a space project early on in Cmosis’s existence, around 2010, pushed the company to work with cutting-edge sensor technology and further its CMOS fabrication capabilities. Te sensor was a fully-custom CMOS chip for ESA’s Solar Orbiter satellite, boasting a very high dynamic range pixel. ‘We were one of the first to demonstrate [this pixel] on a chip,’ Meynants recalled.
satellite was launched last year, meaning a development time of ten years. ‘Tese are 2k x 2k, 10µm pixels – really big devices, 3 x 3cm – and there are four of those on that satellite,’ Meynants said. ‘Tat was state-of-the-art technology [in 2010], BSI high dynamic range pixels,’ he added. ‘Now you can find that technology in mobile phones.’ Space science will continue to push boundaries, even if the technology might be mainstream by the time it is launched into space. O
Guy Meynants is on the board of Photolitics, which provides custom image sensor designs, and also works part-time at KU Leuven, researching image sensors in harsh environments like those found in space
Paul Jerram has worked in the imaging division of Teledyne e2v for nearly 25 years
Reference
1. JN Maki, D Gruel, C McKinney et al. The Mars 2020 engineering cameras and microphone on the Perseverance rover: a next-generation imaging system for Mars exploration. Space Sci Rev 216, 137 (2020).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-020-00765-9
A panorama, taken on 20 February by the navigation cameras on the rover, combined six individual images 14 IMAGING AND MACHINE VISION EUROPE APRIL/MAY 2021 @imveurope |
www.imveurope.com
Nasa/JPL-Caltech
Nasa/JPL-Caltech
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