PACE Engineers Work on Focal Plane Assemblies

[27-July-17] PACE Project engineers at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center work on the Focal Plane Assemblies for the main instrument and test an early development unit of the combined detector and front-end electronics. Light from the ocean will be received by the detector, then read, amplified and converted to digital signal by the front end electronics before being summed into science pixels.

According to Ulrik Gliese, Instrument Science and Technology Manager for the Ocean Color Instrument on PACE, "The Focal Plane Assemblies are one of the most important parts of the instrument. They collect a small number of photons from the telescope and convert them into a large number of electrons before sending them to the rest of the instrument."