Charge-Coupled Device Camera For The Galileo Jupiter Orbiter Spacecraft

Kenneth P. Klaasen; Maurice C. Clary; James R. Janesick

doi:10.1117/12.943799

23 October 1984 Charge-Coupled Device Camera For The Galileo Jupiter Orbiter Spacecraft

Kenneth P. Klaasen, Maurice C. Clary, James R. Janesick

Proceedings Volume 0493, Optical Platforms; (1984) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.943799
Event: The National Symposium and Workshop on Optical Platforms, 1984, Huntsville, United States

Abstract

The slow-scan television camera being built for NASA's Galileo Jupiter Orbiter consists of a 1500-mm-focal-length telescope coupled to a camera head housing a newly developed 800-X-800-element charge-coupled device (CCD) detector based on "virtual-phase" charge transfer technology. This detector provides broadband sensitivity over 100 times that of a comparable vidicon-tube camera while also yielding improved resolution, linearity, geometric fidelity, and spectral range. The system noise floor is 30 electrons, which results in a dynamic range of about 3500. The noise floor is limited by the production of small amounts of unwanted charge within the detector due to clocking the gate voltages during image read-out. Saturation of the detector with 9000-A light, followed by a high-speed erasure cycle prior to exposing each image, stabilizes the detector quantum efficiency at its maximum level for wavelengths beyond 7000A. In the near-Jovian radiation belts, interactions of high-energy particles with the silicon CCD result in the production of unwanted charge. Special techniques have been implemented (e.g., tantalum and quartz shielding, rapid image readout, and 2 x 2 picture-element on-chip averaging) to ensure adequate signal-to-noise performance for images acquired as close to Jupiter as five planetary radii. Instabilities in the inertially pointed scan platform on which the camera is mounted will at times limit image resolution by introducing smear into the pictures.

Citation Download Citation

Kenneth P. Klaasen, Maurice C. Clary, and James R. Janesick "Charge-Coupled Device Camera For The Galileo Jupiter Orbiter Spacecraft", Proc. SPIE 0493, Optical Platforms, (23 October 1984); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.943799

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