6 January 2011

SSTL wins €10.69m ESA contract; MCT to improve on InGaAs in SWIR detectors

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) of Guildford, UK has won a €10.69m contract from the European Space Agency (ESA) via Dutch Space to provide a short-wave infrared (SWIR) spectrometer as part of the Tropospheric Ozone Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) for the Sentinel 5 Precursor atmospheric monitoring mission.

The Optical Payloads Group of SSTL (which is owned by EADS Astrium NV) will coordinate an industrial consortium including the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON) and France’s Sofradir — which makes cooled IR detectors based on mercury cadmium telluride (MCT/HgCdTe) for military, space and industrial applications — to procure and integrate the precision remote sensing instrument.

The SWIR spectrometer will be used to measure atmospheric carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH4) — the latter being the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas. After completion of ESA’s Envisat Mission, the Sentinel 5 Precursor mission aims to provide a source of accurate and detailed data, allowing scientists to continue to study both air quality and climate change until Sentinel 5 is launched in the next decade. “It is imperative that we maintain the excellent atmospheric and environmental data provided by Envisat,” says SSTL’s Dr Matt Perkins.

“Climate change and air quality are global issues requiring the best scientific and technical approaches and we are very proud that the UK has the technology and experience to lead such an important European space project,” says Dr Ruth Boumphrey, head of Earth Observation at the UK Space Agency.

Sentinel 5 Precursor builds on the developments of the TROPOMI instrument, which is led by Dutch Space as prime contractor. TROPOMI, which is co-funded by The Netherlands and ESA, includes much improved SWIR measurements compared to the SCIAMACHY instrument onboard Envisat. A push-broom replaces SCIAMACHY’s scanning instrument, providing much smaller pixels (7km2 x 7km2 vs 120km2 x 30km2), and the measurement sensitivity is also greatly improved. Immersed grating technology will increase the effective resolution of the instrument without increasing the size and mass of the module.

Also, the MCT detectors that are expected to be less susceptible to in-flight radiation damage than the near-infrared (NIR) extended-wavelength InGaAs detector arrays on board Envisat.

Tags: SWIR detectors

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