In June 2020 NASA has selected the VERTIAS Discovery mission to Venus for flight. The Venus Emissivity Mapper (VEM) provided by DLR together with the VISAR radar system provided by JPL are the core payload of the mission. VEM is the first flight instrument designed with a focus on mapping the surface of Venus using atmospheric windows around 1 μm wavelength. It will provide a global map of surface composition by observing with six narrow band filters from 0.86 to 1.18 μm. Continuous observation of Venus’ thermal emission will place tight constraints on current day volcanic activity. Eight additional channels provide measurements of atmospheric water vapor abundance as well as cloud microphysics and dynamics and permit accurate correction of atmospheric interference on the surface data. Combining VEM with a high-resolution radar mapper on the NASA VERITAS and ESA EnVision missions will provide key insights in the divergent evolution of Venus. After several years of pre-development including the setup of a laboratory prototype the implementation for flight has started with the qualification of the flight detectors, the review of all requirements flowdowns as well as the finalizing of spacecraft interfaces.
The Fast Front End Electronic (F-FEE) is a unit of the payload for the PLATO ESA mission. PLATO aims at finding and characterising a large number of extra solar planetary systems. In order to achieve its scientific objectives, PLATO relies on the analysis of continuous time series of high precision photometric measurements of stellar fluxes. The scientific payload of PLATO is based on a multi-telescope approach, involving a set of 24 ”normal” cameras working at a cadence of 25 s optimized to monitor stars fainter than magnitude 8 (photometry on saturated stars down to magnitude 4 will be possible), plus two ”fast” cameras working at a cadence of 2.5 s, and observing stars in the V range from 4 to 8. Beside providing star brightness measurements for bright stars, the ”fast” cameras also work as fine guidance sensors for the attitude control system of the Spacecraft. Each ”fast” camera is equipped with 4 CCDs with 4510 × 2255 light sensitive pixels each, working in frame transfer mode. In view of the instrument development an Engineering Model (EM) of the F-FEE has been manufactured, assembled and tested. The performance tests have been conducted using artificially generated CCD signals as well as real CCDs, proving the capability of the electronics to satisfy the demanding requirements to fine guidance but also science requirements of the PLATO mission.
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