Rockwell Scientific Chosen By NASA/University of Arizona to Provide Infrared Sensors for James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam Instrument.Business Editors/High-Tech Writers THOUSAND OAKS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 8, 2003 Under a major award from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center. GSFC employs approximately 10,000 civil servants and contractors, and is located approximately 6.5 miles northeast of Washington, D.C. , the University of Arizona (body, education) University of Arizona - The University was founded in 1885 as a Land Grant institution with a three-fold mission of teaching, research and public service. announced that it has selected Rockwell Scientific Company, LLC (RSC) to provide the infrared focal plane arrays (FPAs) for the James Webb Space Telescope This article or section documents a scheduled or expected spaceflight. Details may change as the launch date approaches or more information becomes available. (JWST) Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam). "The detector arrays to be supplied by Rockwell Scientific are the heart of the NIRCam instrument and they enable the sensitive measurements that make the JWST mission so exciting," commented Dr. Marcia Rieke, University of Arizona's principal investigator for the NIRCam instrument. JWST, a part of NASA's Origins Program, will detect the first light-emitting objects from the Universe after the Big Bang. The light from these most distant luminous objects began its journey almost 12-13 billion years ago, very near the beginning of the Universe itself, now believed to be 13.7 billion years old. The NIRCam design is optimized to find these "First Light" sources, but it also includes features that will make it a wonderful tool to study star formation in the Milky Way Galaxy Milky Way Galaxy Large spiral galaxy (roughly 150,000 light-years in diameter) that contains Earth's solar system. It includes the multitude of stars whose light is seen as the Milky Way, the irregular luminous band that encircles the sky defining the plane of the galactic and to discover and characterize planets around other stars. NIRCam will fly ten of RSC's Molecular Beam Epitaxy A technique that "grows" atomic-sized layers on a chip rather than creating layers by diffusion. (MBE) HgCdTe 2048x2048 element detector arrays, each the largest available with current technology, for a total of 40 Megapixels. To form the FPA 1. (hardware) FPA - floating-point accelerator. 2. (programming) FPA - Function Point Analysis. , these arrays will be Indium bump bonded to a versatile, high performance Read Out Integrated Circuit (ROIC), the HAWAII-2RG. The HAWAII-2RG, developed with JWST in mind, is already in use by ground-based astronomers. "These (NIRCam arrays) will be the largest format, lowest noise infrared FPAs ever flown in space; the science these arrays will provide will revolutionize our understanding of the Universe in the new millennium much as the Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the first large optical orbiting observatory. Built from 1978 to 1990 at a cost of $1.5 billion, the HST (named for astronomer E. P. Hubble) was expected to provide the clearest view yet obtained of the universe. did in the last," commented Dr. James Garnett, RSC's NIRCam Program Manager. He added that RSC would fabricate the FPAs at their new Camarillo Production Facility. "Rockwell Scientific's new production facility is ideally suited to produce flight quality, state-of-the-art focal plane arrays. The growing production requirements of high performance IR sensors, for both the space and ground-based astronomy communities, as well as needs by the nation's defense, will be superbly served by RSC's new facility," said Dr. Kadri Vural, Vice President of the Imaging Division of Rockwell Scientific. The selection of Rockwell Scientific as the detector vendor is partly due to the major improvements in detector performance demonstrated in the last 3 years during the packaging and manufacturing technology development program funded under Dr. Craig McCreight at NASA Ames Research Center NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) is a NASA facility located at Moffett Federal Airfield, which covers 43 acres at the borders of the cities of Mountain View and Sunnyvale in California. This research center is most commonly called NASA Ames. . Principal investigator of this development program, Dr. Donald N.B. Hall at the Institute for Astronomy The Institute for Astronomy (IfA) is a research unit within the University of Hawaii system, led by Dr. Rolf-Peter Kudritzki as Director. IfA main headquarters are located at 2680 Woodlawn Drive in Honolulu, Hawaii; additional facilities are located at Kula, Maui and Hilo on the , University of Hawaii (body, education) University of Hawaii - A University spread over 10 campuses on 4 islands throughout the state. http://hawaii.edu/uhinfo.html. See also Aloha, Aloha Net. , demonstrated mean detector dark currents for (lambda)co = 5.3(mu)m material below 30 electrons per hour per pixel at operating temperatures at or below 42K. This remarkable achievement, combined with quantum efficiency in excess of 90 percent, read noise below 6 electrons rms, and crosstalk below 1.5% makes these detector arrays by far the most sensitive MWIR devices in the world today. The JWST NIRCam IR-Sensor team includes Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation, the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, United Microelectronics Corporation UMC (United Microelectronics Corporation) was founded as Taiwan's first semiconductor company in 1980 as a spin-off of the government-sponsored institute ITRI. Today, UMC is best known for its merchant foundry business, manufacturing integrated circuits wafers for fabless (UMC), GL Scientific, and Conceptual Analytics, LLC. Rockwell Scientific is an independent, privately owned high technology enterprise with unique technical strengths in electronics, imaging, optics, materials, and information science. Its range of activities include contract research and development services for the U.S. Government and private sector companies, as well as the manufacturing and sale of high value products closely related to its R&D efforts. Additional information can be obtained at www.rockwellscientific.com. |
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