Global technology firm e2v, has provided NASA’s New Horizons Mission with two image sensors captured the first ever close-up images of Pluto.https://cdn.specpick.com/images/photonics/index52_300.jpg712370
New Horizons plans to examine Pluto, its moon Charon and other icy worlds at the edge of our solar system. After having travelled over three billion miles to reach Pluto, it will provide scientific data about the little known regions and the conditions at the origin of our solar system.
Matt Perkins, President of Space Imaging at e2v said that very little is known about Pluto. It is classed as an icy dwarf, with a significant part of its mass believed to be made up of ice. It is so far away that even images from Hubble, which also uses e2v image sensors, are blurred. Bespoke sensors developed for this mission is a perfect example of bringing life to technology.
e2v has been involved in over 150 space projects, including the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Mission, which successfully landed a probe onto comet 67p in 2014. e2v has provided New Horizons with two specialist image sensors for the mission to Pluto, “LORRI (Long Range Reconnaissance Imager)” and “Ralph”.
LORRI is a black and white telescopic camera with a 1k x 1k pixel image sensor at its core.
Paul Jerram, Chief Engineer of Image Sensors at e2v said that LORRI was similar to the Navcam image sensor made for the Rosetta mission, which has produced the majority of images of comet 67p. LORRI will provide images of the approach to Pluto, as well as high resolution geological data as New Horizons passes the dwarf-planet.
Ralph is a 5k wide multi-colour scanning imager that produces a full colour image of the surface of Pluto as New Horizons flies past. Paul Jerram also said that Ralph is highly bespoke made with 7 different CCDs (Coupled Charged Devices) on the same substrate, thus providing a complete focal plane within a single sensor. As the spacecraft is travelling at 33,000 miles per hour with 1,000 times less sunlight at Pluto than at the Earth, the image sensor has to be extremely sensitive and has to work perfectly for the short time that the spacecraft is close to Pluto.
A major aspect of the delivery of e2v’s image sensors into any space programme is the testing required to ensure that they survive the launch and operate to specification when needed. This involves environmental testing to show that the sensor performance will not be damaged by shock, vibration, temperature extremes and the radiation that is encountered outside the Earth’s atmosphere. So while there is only a single sensor on-board the spacecraft, many sensors are produced and destructively tested to ensure that it will work as and when required.
New Horizons was at its closest approach to Pluto on 14th July 2015, at which point e2v image sensors had only minutes to capture as much data as possible from the dwarf-planet as it flew by. Light or radio signals take approximately 4.5 hours to get from Pluto back to Earth, therefore NASA released the first close-up images of Pluto at around 9:00pm (GMT) on 15th July 2015.
