Abstracts submitted by David Berghmans
Solar Imaging Science Fiction - Lessons learned and not learned with the PROBA2 experiment
David Berghmans and Jean-Francois Hochedez
SIDC - Royal Observatory of Belgium
Scientific instruments in space are expensive and scarce equipment. As a consequence, their design and operations tends to be conservative as to minimize the risk for damage or loss. On the ground technology advances with giant leaps, but the proper space qualification of this new technology proceeds only with little steps. Technology demonstration satellites, such as PROBA2, give us the rare opportunity to be more daring in innovation. This innovation is driven by the ever-increasing scientific requirements that conflict with the input bottleneck of a space instrument (lack of photons) as well as with the output bottleneck (lack of telemetry).
In this talk we will visit some ideas for technology innovations that have been considered for PROBA2, of which only some have been implemented. We will concentrate on the aspect of detectors and software. Detectors in solar physics are today typically based on silicon CCDs. Using other materials besides silicon could however allow to design the semi-conductors such that only desired photons are detectable. More advanced electronic circuitry to read-out the detector, as in CMOS detectors, would allow to have a variable exposure time over the FOV or to remove cosmic ray hits on the fly. Improved software can help bridging the telemetry gap. Why bringing down uninteresting data if onboard software can detect events? Even at times of major events, most of the solar disc remains essentially invariant suggesting unexplored possibilities for video compression. |
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