With the successful launch of Nasa’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover from Cape Canaveral, Teledyne Imaging is highlighting that its CCDs are integrated into remote sensing instruments on board the exploratory system.

One in the sensing eye for Nasa's Mars Perseverance Rover

The Mars 2020 mission is part of a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Red Planet, including looking for signs of past microbial life.

Specifically, Teledyne’s CCD42-10 sensor (right) has performed a similar role on Mars since 2012 within the ChemCam instrument on-board NASA’s earlier rover, Curiosity. The SuperCam and SHERLOC instruments of Perseverance are more advanced, however, increasing the capability to search for organic compounds and minerals.

The company writes:

“This version of the CCD42 family of CCD sensors has a full frame architecture. Back illumination technology, in combination with an extremely low noise amplifier, make the device well-suited to the most demanding applications, including spectroscopy as performed by the SuperCam and SHERLOC instruments on the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover.”

As well as SuperCam and SHERLOC, Teledyne DALSA’s Bromont semiconductor foundry built the JPL-designed CCD image sensor that powers SkyCam, part of the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA). This is a meteorological suite for the Mars 2020 rover.

“Building on technology from the previous Curiosity rover, SkyCam is one of the Radiation and Dust Sensor (RDS) instruments that will monitor sky brightness over time in a variety of wavelengths and geometries in order to characterize Martian dust and the solar and thermal radiation environment. SkyCam will image the sky at varying times as part of the dust study, for cloud tracking, and for astronomical imaging.”

A final company link to Perseverance is that all of the electricity needed to operate the rover is provided by a power system called a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, which was developed by Teledyne Energy Systems, in Maryland, US.