FLEX instrument: status, performances, and lessons learnt

M. Taccola; S. Da Mota Silva; J. Pereira do Carmo; G. Petitjean; R. Bock; O. Fratacci; J. Trastour; M. Baroni; S. Naldoni; D. Nuzzi; H. Bittner

doi:10.1117/12.2688822

12 July 2023 FLEX instrument: status, performances, and lessons learnt

M. Taccola, S. Da Mota Silva, J. Pereira do Carmo, G. Petitjean, R. Bock, O. Fratacci, J. Trastour, M. Baroni, S. Naldoni, D. Nuzzi, H. Bittner

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Proceedings Volume 12777, International Conference on Space Optics — ICSO 2022; 127770J (2023) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2688822
Event: International Conference on Space Optics — ICSO 2022, 2022, Dubrovnik, Croatia

Abstract

The FLuorescence Explorer (FLEX) is the 8th Earth Explorer mission currently being developed by ESA with the objective to measure solar induced vegetation fluorescence. This will advance our understanding of photosynthesis and the health of vegetation. Vegetation fluorescence is a very faint signal, and this brings many challenges for the instrument design, development and test, in particular for the very stringent straylight requirement. The development of the FLEX payload (FLORIS instrument) is led by Leonardo (Italy) with OHB (Germany) in its core industrial team. A major milestone has been achieved by completing the instrument Critical Design Review beginning of 2022, allowing now to move into the phase of flight hardware integration. Most of the instrument flight components and subsystems are already manufactured and ready for integration. An extensive test campaign has been already performed on an optically representative engineering model. This campaign provided very useful results in particular for the validation and optimization of the instrument alignment procedures, of cleanliness & contamination preventive measures and the assessment of the optical performances predictions, in particular straylight in flight representative conditions. In this paper an overview of the instrument design, status and development progress is provided including an outlook of the follow up project activities to get ready for FLEX mission launch in 2025. The main results of the engineering model test campaign will be provided with emphasis on the achieved optical performance results. In addition to the project status this paper highlights also some of the most important lessons learnt during the project development as reported in section 4.

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M. Taccola, S. Da Mota Silva, J. Pereira do Carmo, G. Petitjean, R. Bock, O. Fratacci, J. Trastour, M. Baroni, S. Naldoni, D. Nuzzi, and H. Bittner "FLEX instrument: status, performances, and lessons learnt", Proc. SPIE 12777, International Conference on Space Optics — ICSO 2022, 127770J (12 July 2023); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2688822

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