Teledyne to Supply NASA with Sensor Chip Assembly for Goddard Space Flight Telescope

NASA has awarded Teledyne Scientific & Imaging LLC with a contract to supply its shortwave infrared (SWIR) sensor chip assembly (SCA) for the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The $23 million contract will span across a 29-month period of performance, concluding in October 2020. Teledyne will produce 72 SWIR SCA devices for the WFIRST Space Flight Focal Plane Assembly.

WFIRST will utilize 18 of Teledyne’s H4RG-10 arrays in the focal plane assembly. With over 300 million pixels, it will be the largest IR focal plane operating in space when it launches in the mid-2020s. WFIRST will have nearly 300× as many pixels as there are in the IR camera of the Hubble Space Telescope, enabling it to take images that have 100× the field of view of Hubble. The large field of view enables WFIRST to survey large areas of the sky to measure the effects of dark matter and dark energy on the distribution of galaxies in the universe.

The H4RG-10 IR array is at a mature state, advanced to NASA technology readiness level 6 (TRL-6) during a 45-month development contract that commenced in 2014. TRL-6 is the level at which components are qualified for use in the harsh environment of space. In addition to the IR arrays, Teledyne has a development contract with NASA for the visible light detectors that will be used in the coronograph instrument of WFIRST.

“Teledyne is proud to be NASA’s partner for space astronomy with the IR and visible detectors of WFIRST provided by our digital imaging segment,” said Robert Mehrabian, chairman and CEO of Teledyne. “This mission exemplifies Teledyne’s commitment to NASA, with Teledyne detectors also being used on Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, and many Earth science and planetary missions.”

Teledyne Scientific & Imaging provides R&D services in the areas of electronics, imaging sensors, information sciences, materials science, and optics. It also designs and manufactures imaging products and services such as IR and visible FPAs, IR imaging subsystems, and laser eye protection systems.