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ESA's 'Billion-Pixel' Camera gaia → → ESA’S ‘BIllION-PIxel’ CAMERA The challenges of the Gaia mission Philippe Gare, Giuseppe Sarri & Rudolf Schmidt Directorate of Science and Robotic Exploration, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands Gaia is ESA’s global space astrometry mission, Combined with the simultaneously measured photometric designed to map one thousand million stars and and spectrometric information, the Gaia data set will provide hundreds of thousands of other celestial objects in a vast improvement of our knowledge of the early formation our galaxy, so its camera will have to be something of our galaxy and its subsequent dynamical, chemical and star-forming evolution. truly special. As it spins gently in its orbit, 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth, Gaia will scan the entire sky for stars, planets, Indeed, when Gaia lifts off from ESA’s Spaceport in Kourou, asteroids, distant galaxies and everything in between. French Guiana, by the end of 2011, it will be carrying the Conducting a census of over a thousand million stars, it largest digital camera in the Solar System. will monitor each of its target stars up to 70 times over a European Space Agency | Bulletin 137 | February 2009 51 science five-year period, precisely charting positions, distances, Early technology development started in 2000, but by movements and changes in brightness. 2005 the level of confidence in these large-size CCDs was high enough that mass production could be envisaged. The aim is to detect every celestial object down to about a The same year, a procurement contract was placed with million times fainter than the unaided human eye can see. e2v technologies (UK) for the astrometric-type CCD and To do that, it needs a large camera. In fact, there will be over extended, in early 2006, to the ‘blue’ and ‘red’ types of CCDs 100 separate cameras in Gaia, tiled together in a mosaic to (differences due to the wavelength range for which they are register every object that passes through the field of view. optimised). Scientists call each of these individual cameras ‘charge- coupled devices’, or CCDs. Thanks to this early start, the production is now well ahead of the required dates for the satellite. About two thirds Each CCD is itself a major piece of hi-tech kit that converts of the total amount of CCDs is already available for the light into electrical charge and stores it in tiny pockets spacecraft programme, this includes more than half of the known as ‘pixels’ until the computer reads out this flight-quality models. information. With about 1000 million pixels, Gaia’s focal The sensitivity of CCDs to radiation in space was the most plane is the largest digital camera ever built for spaceflight. critical problem encountered to date (i.e. from solar activity such as solar flares or ‘coronal mass ejections’), and this Progress made and difficulties overcome was even considered a major ‘show-stopper’ for the whole Gaia’s impressive task meant that several key technologies mission if not adequately mitigated. needed to be pushed forward significantly. The performance of some optical equipment, e.g. mirrors and detectors, Astrium SAS, the prime contractor, proposed a was subject to specific technology developments but, in comprehensive CCD test and characterisation programme. particular, the size of Gaia’s novel CCDs presented some This programme was reviewed and accepted in close unique manufacturing challenges. collaboration with the scientific community and is now in its → Measurement principles of astrometry Astrometry, the science of measurement errors only permit to over the entire mission lifetime. determining the position of objects achieve accuracies of the order of a This technique was successfully in the sky, has been predominantly milliarcsecond, thus three orders of demonstrated on Hipparcos, ESA’s performed from Earth within the magnitude worse than the expected first astrometry mission, launched in ‘narrow’ field of view of a telescope. Gaia accuracy. 1989. This method relies on measuring Gaia’s technique is ‘wide-angle’ the apparent displacement over astrometry, which allows direct time of nearby stars compared to measurement of the absolute more distant reference stars. This parallax. This technique is based on displacement, known as ‘parallax’, continuous star detections in two is caused by the changing direction fields of view separated by a large of view of an observer as Earth angle which needs to be known and orbits around the Sun. The inherent maintained at a very high accuracy d=1/p p= parallax in arcseconds d=distance to star in parsecs (1 parsec=3.26 light-years) Line of sight in July p d Line of sight in January 1 a.u. 1 a.u. Earth ↑ Sun ESA’s Hipparcos spacecraft 52 www.esa.int gaia → M1’ execution phase. Based on detailed analysis of early results, it is expected that the radiation effect can be calibrated and M1 so removed from real measurements in space. The associated data processing is currently in its design M3’ phase. The process will not be simple, because many CCD M5 parameters need to be taken into account, but it should ensure that measurement accuracy is not impeded by M6 radiation effects. M4 M4’ M3 Many lessons have been learned during the CCD production; M2 not only related to the development and validation of new CCD technologies, but also linked to the effort associated M2’ to the establishment of a ‘mass production’ for space hardware. Torus The most obvious lesson learned is that the production of Focal plane assembly new technology items must begin as early as possible, even before the spacecraft programme starts and must remain very closely linked to the spacecraft project. For Gaia, this early start means that the procurement and availability of the CCDs, initially considered to be the most critical activity, ↑ has been downgraded to a relatively smooth production process. The Gaia Payload Module. The focal plane is hanging on the ‘optical bench torus’ made of silicon carbide. The Despite several unexpected problems emerging during the optics consist of 10 mirrors and the refractive optical CCD production phase, the associated healthy schedule elements. Mirrors M1, M2 and M3 form one telescope and meant that problems could be resolved with low stress and M1’, M2’, M3’ the other telescope. The subsequent set of without excessive time pressure. mirrors M4/M4’, M5 and M6 combine the light from both Gaia spacecraft and payload in detail telescopes and direct it to the focal plane assembly. The fields of view are 106.5° apart (Astrium SAS) Gaia’s star measurement principle relies on the repeated observation of star positions in two fields of view. The spacecraft rotates slowly at a constant angular rate of 1 degree/min around the spin axis, therefore completing of the same celestial object over the five-year mission four great circles on the sky in one day. In addition, the duration. orientation of the spin axis is modulated by a slow precession around the Sun-to-Earth line with a period of The achievement of the final product of the mission, a 63.12 days that enables the observation of about 70 transits catalogue containing the accurate position and true motion Proximity → Electronic Modules The focal plane assembly. CCDs Each of the 106 CCDs has its own front-end electronics (Proximity Electronic Module). The detection plane is made up of 7 rows. Each one is served for power, clock and data distribution by one Interconnection Mod- ule. The thermal dissipation is purely passive. The mass Photometer of the focal plane assembly Prisms is 190 kg and the power consumption is 430 W Interconnection (Astrium SAS) Modules European Space Agency | Bulletin 137 | February 2009 53 science Star Spectroscopic of about one thousand million stars, requires a complex Mappers Astrometric Field space and ground infrastructure. The expected accuracy (SM1/2) Field (RVS1/3) of the order of 10 to 300 microarcseconds, depending on AF1–AF9 the magnitude and colour of the star, calls for extreme BP RP mechanical and thermal stability of the spacecraft. row 7 Star motion Star The Payload Module is thermally insulated and its optical row 6 bench and nearly all optical elements are made of silicon carbide, a material which offers an extreme stiffness row 5 combined with a very low coefficient of thermal expansion. row 4 The spacecraft will be placed in a ‘Lissajous’ orbit around 0.42 m the Lagrange point L2, about 1.5 million km away from Earth row 3 in the anti-sunward direction. This location offers a highly row 2 thermally stable illumination by the Sun. Photometric row 1 (blue & red) The Payload Module consists of two telescopes separated Field by a ‘basic angle’ of 106.5° sharing the same focal plane. 0.93 m The ultimate astrometric accuracy is determined by the size of the telescope aperture and the total number of photons detected. Therefore, fundamental design criteria are: ↑ - mirrors M1 and M1’ as large as possible but still compatible with the size of fairing of the Soyuz launcher; The CCD focal plane. The strips SM1 and SM2 are used for - maximum transmittance of the optics and ‘quantum inital star acquisition. The strips AF1 to AF9 constitute the efficiency’ (i.e. the conversion efficiency of photons into astrometric field for precision position measurement. The electrons) of the CCD detectors; and strips BP and RP allow spectral measurement in the range - large focal plane to simultaneously maximise signal 330‒680 nm and 640‒1000 nm. The strips RVS1 to RVS3 integration time and number of stars detection. allow fine spectroscopy in the range 847-874 nm (Astrium SAS) Thanks to these specifications, Gaia will collect ten thousand times more photons in its five-year mission than the Hipparcos spacecraft did for a comparable star.
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