• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to secondary sidebar
  • NEWS:
  • SatNews
  • SatMagazine
  • MilSatMagazine
  • SmallSat News
  • |     EVENTS:
  • SmallSat Symposium
  • Satellite Innovation
  • MilSat Symposium

SatNews

  • HOME
  • Magazines
  • Events
  • SmallSat Europe Insights
  • Industry Calendar
    • IN PERSON
    • VIRTUAL
  • Subscribe

Teledyne e2v’s Eyes Have It … ESA’s Successful Testing of CHEOPS Instrument

April 22, 2020


An image of the star HD8111, which is not known to host any exoplanets, taken by CHEOPS during the mission’s in-orbit commissioning

An announcement revealed that Teledyne e2v is proud to have supplied the single eye of the Characterizing ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) and congratulates ESA and the CHEOPS scientists for the successful completion of extensive testing of the CHEOPS instrument and detector.

The CHEOPS mission payload is based around a single frame transfer backside illuminated charge coupled device (CCD), supplied by Teledyne e2v, which is located in the focal plane of a 32 cm diameter on-axis telescope.

The device selected for the CHEOPS mission was done so in part based on proven heritage and reliability in space. The CCD47-20 image sensor is possibly the most used image sensor for space imaging missions, to date.


CCD47-20

A list of the missions that the CCD47-20 has been used in can be found here, along with technical specifications.

Carlos Corral van Damme, ESA’s System Principal Engineer for Cheops said that the pointing is extremely stable: this means that while the telescope observes a star for hours while the spacecraft moves along its orbit, the image of the star remains always within the same group of pixels in the detector.  Such great stability is a combination of the excellent performance of the equipment and of the bespoke pointing algorithms, and will be especially important to fulfil the scientific objectives of the mission. The thermal stability of the telescope and the detector has also proven to be even better than required.

ESA’s CHEOPS mission lifted off on December 18, 2020 the first image was acquired using the CCD47-20 detector. As of April 16, 2020, ESA confirmed that routine science operations will commence by the end of April.

The first image referred to as a “perfect blur” was of a target star located around 150 light years away. The intentionally blurry image is a product of the specially designed telescope optics, which are deliberately defocused to maximize the precision of CHEOPS’ measurements.

CHEOPS will now carry this unprecedented study by measuring and characterizing the exact size of exoplanets (planets in other solar systems) to determine their bulk density.

Dr Paul Jerram, Chief Engineer at Teledyne e2v said that they are delighted to be involved in another mission to discover and characterize exoplanets. Space missions have detected the large majority of exoplanets discovered so far and ground based telescopes using their CCDs, especially Kepler, and CHEOPS will follow up on those discoveries. Their knowledge of exoplanets will dramatically increase in the future when new instruments, for which they are currently making detectors for, are launched, more specifically, PLATO which will focus on detecting Earth-like exoplanets and the WFIRST coronagraph which will directly image exoplanets. 

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

Most Read Stories

  • Space Debris, and the EU’s Space Act
  • In celebration of Juneteenth
  • Wishing Everyone a Happy July 4th … Independence Day, U.S.A.
  • Eutelsat's efforts to obtain funding to save OneWeb
  • Forrester's Digest: Starlink active in Iran

About Satnews

  • Contacts
  • History

Archives

  • July 2025
  • June 2025
  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020

Secondary Sidebar

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OkPrivacy policy
x
Sign up Now (For Free)
Access daily or weekly satellite news updates covering all aspects of the commercial and military satellite industry.
Invalid email address
Notify Me Regarding ( At least one ):
We value your privacy and will not sell or share your email or other information with any other company. You may also unsubscribe at anytime.

Click Here to see our full privacy policy.
Thanks for subscribing!