CHELMSFORD, England, 21 July 2013. European space company Astrium in Paris needed imaging sensors for the European Space Agency's (ESA) Sentinel 4 Ultraviolet Visible Near-infrared (UVN) instrument. They found their solution from e2v in Chelmsford, England.
Astrium has awarded a $3.7 million contract to e2v to produce space-qualified custom charge coupled device (CCD) hyperspectral imaging sensors, which will gather data on the quality of the Earth's atmosphere and its chemical composition from geostationary orbit.
Engineers from e2v will use technologies like back illumination for quantum efficiency and modulation transfer function over the wavelength range of interest, company officials say.
The sensors are mounted in an e2v-designed assembly that manages the electrical, thermal, mechanical, and optical interfaces to the instrument. The contract has funding from the European Union.
Sentinel 4 is part of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) initiative, which is a joint undertaking of the European Commission and the European Space Agency.
It will deliver environmental and security services in Europe, in response to environmental policies. ESA is responsible for the Space component of GMES, of which the five families of Sentinel missions are key components.
Within this program, Sentinel 4 will go into orbit onboard the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) geostationary satellite and enable seamless observations of Europe and North Africa to be taken hourly.
For more information contact e2v online at www.e2v.com, or Astrium at www.astrium.eads.net.
