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Excelitas has announced about its successful participation in the launch of NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex space mission.

The mission - a joint effort of NASA, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the OLA Science Team led by Michael Daly (York University, OLA Instrument Scientist), and MDA (a business unit of Maxar) - was used to map the surface of Bennu, a near-Earth asteroid. On April 5, NASA released a 3D view of Bennu, created on the spacecraft by the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter (OLA). In February, OLA made more than 11 million measurements of the distance between OSIRIS-REx and Bennu’s surface as the spacecraft flew less than 1.2 miles (2 km) above the surface – the closest orbit ever achieved by spacecraft.

Excelitas has provided its avalanche photodiodes (APD) as the main detector enabling the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter to scan and map the asteroid’s entire surface and provide higher-resolution topographical information than ever before possible. The resulting 3-D topographical maps of Bennu, the most detailed ever to be captured of an asteroid, will provide fundamental and unprecedented data to help study asteroid shape and topography and will allow the mission team to select potential sites for sample collection.

When sample sites are selected after about sixteen months of comprehensive surface mapping, the spacecraft will deploy a robotic arm to reach out (without landing) and collect at least a 2.1-ounce sample that will be brought back to Earth for study in 2023. NASA’s website says the mission will help scientists investigate how planets formed and how life began, as well as improve the understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth.

The Excelitas APD used for OLA is its C30954EH, a 0.8mm active diameter silicon photodiode that features high quantum efficiency at the YAG-wavelength (1064nm), fast response time, and wide operating temperature range. This standard product was successfully qualified through the extensive requirements of a deep-space probe. Excelitas has a long heritage of designing and producing YAG-enhanced APDs used in several space surveying missions. Click here to know more about Excelitas Photodiodes.