The instrument control unit of the ESA-PLATO 2.0 mission
- Author(s)
- M Focardi, Stefano Pezzuto, R. Cosentino, Giusi Micela, M Pancrazzi, Roland Ottensamer
- Abstract
PLATO 2.0 has been selected by ESA as the third medium-class Mission (M3) of the Cosmic Vision Program. Its Payload is conceived for the discovery of new transiting exoplanets on the disk of their parent stars and for the study of planetary system formation and evolution as well as to answer fundamental questions concerning the existence of other planetary systems like our own, including the presence of potentially habitable new worlds. The PLATO Payload design is based on the adoption of four sets of short focal length telescopes having a large field of view in order to exploit a large sky coverage and to reach, at the same time, the needed photometry accuracy and signalto- noise ratio (S/N) within a few tens of seconds of exposure time. The large amount of data produced by the telescope is collected and processed by means of the Payload's Data Processing System (DPS) composed by many processing electronics units. This paper gives an overview of the PLATO 2.0 DPS, mainly focusing on the architecture and processing capabilities of its Instrument Control Unit (ICU), the electronic subsystem acting as the main interface between the Payload (P/L) and the Spacecraft (S/C).
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Astrophysics
- External organisation(s)
- Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali , INAF - Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, INAF - Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo
- Journal
- Proceedings of SPIE
- Volume
- 9904
- No. of pages
- 15
- ISSN
- 0277-786X
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2231658
- Publication date
- 07-2016
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 103003 Astronomy, 103004 Astrophysics
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Condensed Matter Physics, Applied Mathematics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Computer Science Applications
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/d999b544-9381-43a0-9fab-45d5a15a179e