A high stability multi-CCD focal plane for ESA imaging missions

Results are described from a high-stability multi-CCD demonstration focal plane assembly developed by MSSL under ESA contract, using new large-format CCD42-C0s from e2v technologies. Space-based planetary-transit hunting and asteroseismology missions such as ESA's Eddington and NASA's Kepler require large multi-CCD focal planes with a stringent requirement on stability, both thermal and electronic. Other significant requirements are wide dynamic range and a moderately high readout rate of ∼1.2 Mpix s−1 per output (in this case using a 16 bit CCD signal processor ASIC from CCLRC RAL). The high digital data rate (Eddington has in total ∼3 focal planes each with 12 output chains) is achieved using SpaceWire links. The demo-FPA is flight-representative in terms of performance, mass, power and component selection. This work provides real-world data for future ESA studies. It is also compatible with the Gaia radial velocity spectrometer (RVS) focal plane, which has many similar requirements.