Alignment and calibration of the ICON-FUV instrument: development of a vacuum UV facility

Loicq, Jérôme; Blain, Pascal; Kintziger, Christian; Desselle, Richard; Stockman, Yvan; Domken, Isabelle; Renotte, Étienne; Clermont, Lionel; Rider, Kodi; Chou, Cathy; Poppett, Claire; Frey, H. U.; Mende, S. B.

doi:10.1117/12.2233192

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…The actual resolution performance of the instrument was established from laboratory tests and calibrations performed at the Centre Spatiale de Liege in Belgium. A more detailed account of the functional testing of the instrument is given by Loicq et al (2016c).…”

Section: Resolution Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…CSL constructed a sophisticated FUV testing facility for the ICON FUV alignment testing and calibration (Loicq et al 2016c) The VUV alignment and calibration was performed inside the 6.5 meter diameter round vacuum chamber at CSL in Liege. The light source used in the tests was a high-pressure deuterium lamp on a McPherson vacuum monochromator coupled to a two component off axis collimator shown in Fig.…”

Section: Fuv Alignment Testing and Calibrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Far Ultra-Violet Imager on the Icon Mission

et al. 2017

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ICON Far UltraViolet (FUV) imager contributes to the ICON science objectives by providing remote sensing measurements of the daytime and nighttime atmosphere/ionosphere. During sunlit atmospheric conditions, ICON FUV images the limb altitude profile in the shortwave (SW) band at 135.6 nm and the longwave (LW) band at 157 nm perpendicular to the satellite motion to retrieve the atmospheric O/N 2 ratio. In conditions of atmospheric darkness, ICON FUV measures the 135.6 nm recombination emission of O + ions used to compute the nighttime ionospheric altitude distribution. ICON Far UltraViolet (FUV) imager is a Czerny-Turner design Spectrographic Imager with two exit slits and corresponding back imager cameras that produce two independent images in separate wavelength bands on two detectors. All observations will be processed as limb altitude profiles. In addition, the ionospheric 135.6 nm data will be processed as longitude and latitude spatial maps to obtain images of ion distributions around regions of equatorial spread F. The ICON FUV optic axis is pointed 20 degrees below local horizontal and has a steering mirror that allows the field of view to be steered up to 30 degrees forward and aft, to keep the local magnetic meridian in the field of view. The detectors are micro channel plate (MCP) intensified FUV tubes with the phosphor fiber-optically coupled to Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs). The dual stack MCP-s amplify the photoelectron signals to overcome the CCD noise and the rapidly scanned frames are co-added to digitally create 12-second integrated images. Digital on-board signal processing is used to compensate for geometric distortion and satellite motion and to achieve data compression. The instrument was originally aligned in visible light by using a special grating and visible cameras. Final alignment, functional and environmental testing and calibration were performed in a large vacuum chamber with

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Section: Resolution Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fuv Alignment Testing and Calibrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Far Ultra-Violet Imager on the Icon Mission

et al. 2017

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“…In the front side panel, a hole has been created to allow collimator light to reach the instrument. Alignment details of the instrument and calibration are described in the following papers [18] [19].…”

Section: Gse Instrument Manipulatormentioning

confidence: 99%

V-UV spectrographic imager (FUV) for Icon mission: from optical design to vacuum calibration

Loicq

Blain

Kintziger

et al. 2017

International Conference on Space Optics — ICSO 2016

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In the frame of this mission the Space Center of Liege was involved in the optical design optimization and related analysis, and VUV on ground calibration. The ICON mission (NASA) will explore the boundary between Earth and space to understand the physical connection between our world and our space environment. Recent NASA missions have shown how dramatically variable the region of space near Earth is, where ionized plasma and neutral gas collide and react. This region, the ionosphere, has long been known to respond to space weather drivers from the sun, but in this century we have come to realize that the energy and momentum of our own low altitude atmosphere regularly affect the ionosphere with equal or greater magnitude. ICON will weigh the impacts of these two drivers as they exert change on our space environment. During the day, photoelectrons colliding with atmospheric neutrals, N2 and O, produce emissions and by observing the limb brightness of the N2 Lyman-Birge-Hopfield (LBH) band and of the OI 135.6 nm line, the density ratio of the neutral N2 and O atmospheric constituents can be retrieved. At night the recombination of O+ ions with ionospheric electrons also creates OI 135.6 nm emissions and the nighttime electron density can be estimated from the limb brightness of 135.6 nm. ICON FUV will measure the altitude distribution of the OI 135.6 nm and N2 LBH dayglow emissions at 157 nm and the altitude and spatial distribution of the OI 135.6 nm nightglow emissions. These quantities can then be used to determine dayside O and N2 densities and altitude profiles, and the nightside O+ densities in the F-region. The ICON-FUV instrument is based upon the IMAGE Spectrographic Imager (SI) [1] [2] [3]. Like this predecessor, ICON-FUV is a two-channel imager that uses a grating spectrometer for spectral discrimination [4] [5] [6]. The two channels are required to provide the daytime profiles of two wavelengths characterizing the N2 and O species (centered at 157 nm and 135.6 nm respectively). This grating type of spectrographic imager minimizes contamination by out-of-band light leaks that are a typical problem for non-grating type FUV cameras. The instrument is composed by two parts, a Czerny-Turner spectrograph selecting the science wavelengths. This spectrograph is then combined with two imagers respectively working in the two wavebands of interest. The challenge of this space instrument was to be designed for a very wide FOV (24° vertical by 18° horizontal).

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Alignment and calibration of the ICON-FUV instrument: development of a vacuum UV facility

Cited by 2 publications

References 5 publications

The Far Ultra-Violet Imager on the Icon Mission

The Far Ultra-Violet Imager on the Icon Mission

V-UV spectrographic imager (FUV) for Icon mission: from optical design to vacuum calibration

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