This paper presents the recent achievements in the development of ASPIICS (Association of Spacecraft for Polarimetric and Imaging Investigation of the Corona of the Sun), a solar coronagraph that is the primary payload of ESA’s formation flying in-orbit demonstration mission PROBA-3. The PROBA-3 Coronagraph System is designed as a classical externally occulted Lyot coronagraph but it takes advantage of the opportunity to place the 1.4 meter wide external occulter on a companion spacecraft, about 150m apart, to perform high resolution imaging of the inner corona of the Sun as close as ~1.1 solar radii. Besides providing scientific data, ASPIICS is also equipped with sensors for providing relevant navigation data to the Formation Flying GNC system. This paper is reviewing the recent development status of the ASPIICS instrument as it passed CDR, following detailed design of all the sub-systems and testing of STM and various Breadboard models.
Etienne Renotte, Steve Buckley, Ileana Cernica, François Denis, Richard Desselle, Lieve De Vos, Silvano Fineschi, Karl Fleury-Frenette, Damien Galano, Camille Galy, Jean-Marie Gillis, Estelle Graas, Rafal Graczyk, Petra Horodyska, Nektarios Kranitis, Michal Kurowski, Michal Ladno, Sylvie Liebecq, Davide Loreggia, Idriss Mechmech, Radek Melich, Dominique Mollet, Michał Mosdorf, Mateusz Mroczkowski, Kevin O’Neill, Karel Patočka, Antonis Paschalis, Radek Peresty, Bartlomiej Radzik, Miroslaw Rataj, Lucas Salvador, Jean-Sébastien Servaye, Yvan Stockman, Cédric Thizy, Tomasz Walczak, Alicja Zarzycka, Andrei Zhukov
This paper presents the current status of ASPIICS, a solar coronagraph that is the primary payload of ESA’s formation
flying in-orbit demonstration mission PROBA-3.
The “sonic region” of the Sun corona remains extremely difficult to observe with spatial resolution and sensitivity
sufficient to understand the fine scale phenomena that govern the quiescent solar corona, as well as phenomena that lead
to coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which influence space weather. Improvement on this front requires eclipse-like
conditions over long observation times. The space-borne coronagraphs flown so far provided a continuous coverage of
the external parts of the corona but their over-occulting system did not permit to analyse the part of the white-light
corona where the main coronal mass is concentrated.
The PROBA-3 Coronagraph System, also known as ASPIICS (Association of Spacecraft for Polarimetric and Imaging
Investigation of the Corona of the Sun) is designed as a classical externally occulted Lyot coronagraph but it takes
advantage of the opportunity to place the external occulter on a companion spacecraft, about 150m apart, to perform high
resolution imaging of the inner corona of the Sun as close as ~1.1 solar radii. The images will be tiled and compressed on
board in an FPGA before being down-linked to ground for scientific analyses.
ASPIICS is built by a large European consortium including about 20 partners from 7 countries under the auspices of the
European Space Agency. This paper is reviewing the recent development status of the ASPIICS instrument as it is
approaching CDR.
Etienne Renotte, Andres Alia, Alessandro Bemporad, Joseph Bernier, Cristina Bramanti, Steve Buckley, Gerardo Capobianco, Ileana Cernica, Vladimir Dániel, Radoslav Darakchiev, Marcin Darmetko, Arnaud Debaize, François Denis, Richard Desselle, Lieve de Vos, Adrian Dinescu, Silvano Fineschi, Karl Fleury-Frenette, Mauro Focardi, Aurélie Fumel, Damien Galano, Camille Galy, Jean-Marie Gillis, Tomasz Górski, Estelle Graas, Rafał Graczyk, Konrad Grochowski, Jean-Philippe Halain, Aline Hermans, Russ Howard, Carl Jackson, Emmanuel Janssen, Hubert Kasprzyk, Jacek Kosiec, Serge Koutchmy, Jana Kovačičinová, Nektarios Kranitis, Michał Kurowski, Michał Ładno, Philippe Lamy, Federico Landini, Radek Lapáček, Vít Lédl, Sylvie Liebecq, Davide Loreggia, Brian McGarvey, Giuseppe Massone, Radek Melich, Agnes Mestreau-Garreau, Dominique Mollet, Łukasz Mosdorf, Michał Mosdorf, Mateusz Mroczkowski, Raluca Muller, Gianalfredo Nicolini, Bogdan Nicula, Kevin O'Neill, Piotr Orleański, Marie-Catherine Palau, Maurizio Pancrazzi, Antonios Paschalis, Karel Patočka, Radek Peresty, Irina Popescu, Pavel Psota, Miroslaw Rataj, Jan Rautakoski, Marco Romoli, Roman Rybecký, Lucas Salvador, Jean-Sébastien Servaye, Cornel Solomon, Yvan Stockman, Arkadiusz Swat, Cédric Thizy, Michel Thomé, Kanaris Tsinganos, Jim Van der Meulen, Nico Van Vooren, Tomáš Vit, Tomasz Walczak, Alicja Zarzycka, Joe Zender, Andrei Zhukov
KEYWORDS: Coronagraphy, Sensors, Sun, Solar processes, Field programmable gate arrays, Light emitting diodes, Electronics, Staring arrays, Space operations, Information operations
The “sonic region” of the Sun corona remains extremely difficult to observe with spatial resolution and sensitivity sufficient to understand the fine scale phenomena that govern the quiescent solar corona, as well as phenomena that lead to coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which influence space weather. Improvement on this front requires eclipse-like conditions over long observation times. The space-borne coronagraphs flown so far provided a continuous coverage of the external parts of the corona but their over-occulting system did not permit to analyse the part of the white-light corona where the main coronal mass is concentrated. The proposed PROBA-3 Coronagraph System, also known as ASPIICS (Association of Spacecraft for Polarimetric and Imaging Investigation of the Corona of the Sun), with its novel design, will be the first space coronagraph to cover the range of radial distances between ~1.08 and 3 solar radii where the magnetic field plays a crucial role in the coronal dynamics, thus providing continuous observational conditions very close to those during a total solar eclipse. PROBA-3 is first a mission devoted to the in-orbit demonstration of precise formation flying techniques and technologies for future European missions, which will fly ASPIICS as primary payload. The instrument is distributed over two satellites flying in formation (approx. 150m apart) to form a giant coronagraph capable of producing a nearly perfect eclipse allowing observing the sun corona closer to the rim than ever before. The coronagraph instrument is developed by a large European consortium including about 20 partners from 7 countries under the auspices of the European Space Agency. This paper is reviewing the recent improvements and design updates of the ASPIICS instrument as it is stepping into the detailed design phase.
Thermal imagers and used therein infrared array sensors are subject to calibration procedure and evaluation of their
voltage sensitivity on incident radiation during manufacturing process. The calibration procedure is especially important
in so-called radiometric cameras, where accurate radiometric quantities, given in physical units, are of concern. Even
though non-radiometric cameras are not expected to stand up to such elevated standards, it is still important, that the
image faithfully represents temperature variations across the scene. The detectors used in thermal camera are illuminated
by infrared radiation transmitted through a specialized optical system. Each optical system used influences irradiation
distribution across an sensor array. In the article a model describing irradiation distribution across an array sensor
working with an optical system used in the calibration set-up has been proposed. In the said method optical and
geometrical considerations of the array set-up have been taken into account. By means of Monte-Carlo simulation, large
number of rays has been traced to the sensor plane, what allowed to determine the irradiation distribution across the
image plane for different aperture limiting configurations. Simulated results have been confronted with proposed
analytical expression. Presented radiometric model allows fast and accurate non-uniformity correction to be carried out.
Contemporary infrared detector arrays suffers from technological imprecision which causes that the response to uniform radiation results in nonuniform image with superimposed fixed pattern noise (FPN). In order to compensate this noise there is a need to evaluate detectors characteristics like responsivity and offset of every detector in array. In article the method of determining the responsivity of detectors in a microbolometer array is described. In the method geometrical and optical parameters of the detector array and the measurement system are taken into account. A special test bench was constructed and is consisting of: two precise surface black bodies, aperture limiter, an electronic interface for data acquisition and software for measurement and correction of results with optical parameters of the measuring stand taken into account. Constructed aperture limiter enables evaluation of optical paths in measurement stand with equivalent relative aperture F# from 0.5 to 16.1 In order to evaluate the impact of optical path to radiation distribution in the measurement system, special radiation model was elaborated and evaluated in Zemax software. Incident radiation intensity distribution on the detector surface was calculated using Monte-Carlo method for various parameters of the optical path in the measurement system. Calculated radiation maps were used to compensate radiation intensity nonuniformity of optical measurement system giving more precise responsivity evaluation of detector array parameters. The obtained values of voltage responsivity of the detectors in the array, can be used in algorithms like nonuniformity correction and radiometric calibration of the infrared camera. In article results of responsivity evaluation is presented for microbolometer infrared arrays from ULIS company (France).
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