The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft has been operating in L2 ever since its launch in December 2013 with a payload that includes 106 scientific charge-coupled devices (CCDs). Due to the predicted radiation environment at the pre-flight testing stage in addition to the high level of accuracy demanded by the science objectives, the non-ionizing energy loss (NIEL) damage on the detectors was identified as a major factor that could affect the science goals of the mission. Here, we present the analysis of an extended set of charge calibration data, taken up to almost six years after launch. It is found that the rate of radiation damage accumulation by the CCDs has not differed significantly from previous results. While the parallel and serial CTI measure an increase in time, the trap defect landscape is still dominated by the pre-flight defects rather than the radiation-induced traps. CCD devices that were predicted to have a lower NIEL dose measure comparatively larger rates of CTI increase. In addition to this, thicker devices have been measured to have lower serial CTI values compared to thinner devices. The initial parallel CTI values have also been found to be dependent on manufacture year.
The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft was launched in December 2013 and has been in orbit at the Earth-Sun Lagrange point 2 (L2) for over 6 years. The spacecraft measures the positions, distances, space motions and many other physical characteristics of around one billion stars in the Milky Way and beyond. It has a focal plane of 106 Charge-Coupled Devices (CCDs) which have all been performing well but have been measuring a small but quantifiable degradation in performance in time due to Non-Ionizing Energy Loss (NIEL) damage from interstellar radiation. This NIEL damage produces trap defects which can capture charge from signals and reduces the quality of the data. Gaia’s original mission lifetime was planned to be around 5 years and the pre-flight testing and radiation damage analysis was tailored around those timescales as well as with the projected solar activity before launch. Closer to the time of launch and during Gaia’s years of orbit, it has been noted that the solar activity was lower than what was initially predicted. From the previous analysis of in-flight data in 2016, it was calculated that Gaia was experiencing an order of magnitude less radiation damage than was predicted. This paper describes the analysis of charge calibration data and corresponding Charge Transfer Inefficiency (CTI) measurements from the in-flight CCDs, both near the beginning of the mission and after more than 5 years in orbit to quantify the radiation damage impact. These sets of results can be compared with those from the pre-flight tests which can be used to evaluate and understand the differences between the on-ground and in-flight results.
The Gaia payload ensures maximum passive stability using a single material, SiC, for most of its elements. Dedicated metrology instruments are, however, required to carry out two functions: monitoring the basic angle and refocusing the telescope. Two interferometers fed by the same laser are used to measure the basic angle changes at the level of μas (prad, micropixel), which is the highest level ever achieved in space. Two Shack- Hartmann wavefront sensors, combined with an ad-hoc analysis of the scientific data are used to define and reach the overall best-focus. In this contribution, the systems, data analysis, procedures and performance achieved during commissioning are presented .
The Gaia satellite is a high-precision astrometry, photometry and spectroscopic ESA cornerstone mission, currently
scheduled for launch in 2012. Its primary science drivers are the composition, formation and evolution of the Galaxy.
Gaia will achieve its unprecedented accuracy requirements with detailed calibration and correction for CCD radiation
damage and CCD geometric distortion. In this paper, the third of the series, we present our 3D Silvaco ATLAS model
of the Gaia e2v CCD91-72 pixel. We publish e2v's design model predictions for the capacities of one of Gaia's pixel
features, the supplementary buried channel (SBC), for the first time. Kohley et al. (2009) measured the SBC capacities
of a Gaia CCD to be an order of magnitude smaller than e2v's design. We have found the SBC doping widths that yield
these measured SBC capacities. The widths are systematically 2 μm offset to the nominal widths. These offsets appear
to be uncalibrated systematic offsets in e2v photolithography, which could either be due to systematic stitch alignment
offsets or lateral ABD shield doping diffusion. The range of SBC capacities were used to derive the worst-case random
stitch error between two pixel features within a stitch block to be ±0.25 μm, which cannot explain the systematic offsets.
It is beyond the scope of our pixel model to provide the manufacturing reason for the range of SBC capacities, so it does
not allow us to predict how representative the tested CCD is. This open question has implications for Gaia's radiation
damage and geometric calibration models.
The Gaia satellite is a high-precision astrometry, photometry and spectroscopic ESA cornerstone mission, currently scheduled for launch in 2012. Its primary science drivers are the composition, formation and evolution of the Galaxy. Gaia will achieve its unprecedented positional accuracy requirements with detailed calibration and correction for radiation damage. At L2, protons cause displacement damage in the silicon of CCDs. The
resulting traps capture and emit electrons from passing charge packets in the CCD pixel, distorting the image PSF and biasing its centroid. Microscopic models of Gaia's CCDs are being developed to simulate this effect. The key to calculating the probability of an electron being captured by a trap is the 3D electron density within
each CCD pixel. However, this has not been physically modelled for the Gaia CCD pixels. In Seabroke, Holland & Cropper (2008), the first paper of this series, we motivated the need for such specialised 3D device modelling and outlined how its future results will fit into Gaia's overall radiation calibration strategy. In this paper, the second of the series, we present our first results using Silvaco's physics-based, engineering software: the ATLAS
device simulation framework. Inputting a doping profile, pixel geometry and materials into ATLAS and comparing the results to other simulations reveals that ATLAS has a free parameter, fixed oxide charge, that needs to be calibrated. ATLAS is successfully benchmarked against other simulations and measurements of a test device, identifying how to use it to model Gaia pixels and highlighting the affect of different doping approximations.
The Gaia satellite is a high-precision astrometry, photometry and spectroscopic ESA cornerstone mission, currently
scheduled for launch in late 2011. Its primary science drivers are the composition, formation and evolution of the
Galaxy. Gaia will not achieve its scientific requirements without detailed calibration and correction for radiation
damage. Microscopic models of Gaia's CCDs are being developed to simulate the effect of radiation damage, charge
trapping, which causes charge transfer inefficiency. The key to calculating the probability of a photoelectron being
captured by a trap is the 3D electron density within each CCD pixel. However, this has not been physically modelled
for Gaia CCD pixels. In this paper, the first of a series, we motivate the need for such specialised 3D device modelling
and outline how its future results will fit into Gaia's overall radiation calibration strategy.
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