More details have emerged about UK involvement in two ESA Copernicus missions: Teledyne will supply infrared detectors and NIR CMOS and CCD sensors to the Earth Observation missions.

Teleydyne Imaging technology central to ESA Copernicus missions

The two missions – CHIME and CO2M – incorporate image sensors at the heart of the planned instruments and they will use Teledyne Imaging’s technology.

CHIME

Specifically, Teledyne will participate in the development of the CHIME mission – the Copernicus Hyperspectral Imaging Mission – by supplying infrared detectors.

CHIME, which is described as a unique visible to shortwave infrared spectrometer, will provide hyperspectral observations to support services for sustainable agricultural and biodiversity management, and soil property characterisation.

The mission will complement Copernicus Sentinel-2, says the company, which also features a Teledyne Imaging visible sensor, for applications such as land-cover mapping. Thales Alenia Space France will lead the CHIME industrial consortium.

“This is excellent news in two respects for the CHIME mission,” said Dr Miles Adcock, President Space and Quantum at Teledyne e2v. “First, the UK facility has been able to continue the long-standing supply of imaging sensor technology to the Copernicus Sentinels. Second, we have developed a UK infrared detector design and manufacturing capability that utilises the world’s best base detector substrate materials from within the Teledyne Imaging Group.”

CO2M

It will also be involved in the CO2M mission – Copernicus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Monitoring> This mission will carry a near-infrared and shortwave-infrared spectrometer to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by human activity, with a constellation of three spacecraft mapping the emissions of carbon dioxide.

CO2M will comprise four sensor instruments, CO2I, NO2, Multi-Angle Polarimeter (MAP) and Cloud Imager (CLIM).

Teledyne Imaging will supply for the MAP instrument focal plane array (FPA) VNIR CMOS digital image sensors, from their new family called Capella (2048 x 2048 10µm pixels).

In addition, the CLIM instrument, which relies on the Proba-V flight proven design, will use a Teledyne e2v VNIR CCD detector using 4 x 6000 pixels of the flight proven quadrilinear 13µm pixel device. The CO2M industrial consortium will be led by OHB-System AG.

“We have a proud heritage of supplying the Sentinels with CCD and CMOS detectors,” said Christophe Tatard, Vice President Business and Product Development at Teledyne e2v. “And with this extension of the programme we are very excited to now be providing a SWIR detector as well as the VNIR detectors.”

Pictured above is the Capella CMOS Image Sensor for Space Imaging.

At the end of last week we wrote about isardSAT participating in the development of CRISTAL, the new Copernicus mission to monitor the sea-ice thickness and overlying snow depth.

Copernicus programme

The six “High Priority Candidate Missions” are: CHIME: Copernicus Hyperspectral Imaging Mission, CIMR: Copernicus Imaging Microwave Radiometer, CO2M: Copernicus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Monitoring, CRISTAL: Copernicus Polar Ice and Snow Topography Altimeter, LSTM: Copernicus Land Surface Temperature Monitoring, and ROSE-L: L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar.

The UK should play a role in five out of the six Copernicus missions, via organisations including Airbus UK, Thales Alenia Space UK, the National Physical Laboratory, Teledyne, UKRI, Oxford University, Leicester University, IsardSat and M Squared Lasers.

Thales Alenia Space (a Joint Venture between Thales and Leonardo, in France and Italy), Airbus (Germany and Spain) and OHB (Germany) were the main contract winners.