The company will supply image sensors and detectors to the recently announced proposal of the European Space Agency to place six Copernicus Sentinel satellite missions in space. As the sensor partner for Thales Alenia Space, the UK team will develop, manufacture and supply variants of their Capella CMOS visible image sensor from Chelmsford.

The new CMOS image sensors, which are designed for space applications, feature a resolution of 2048 x 2048, 10µm pixels. They are radiation tolerant, operating in the UV-NIR wavelengths.

“The award of this new contract is a proud moment for our team,” said Miles Adcock, President Space & Quantum at Teledyne e2v. “Our investment in our UK-based fab and the continued development of visible and infrared detector capabilities are testament to the critical support we provide in support of important missions emanating from the UK and the European market.”

The Copernicus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Monitoring mission will carry a near infrared (NIR) and shortwave-infrared (SWIR) spectrometer to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by human activity. This will be provided by Thales Alenia Space in France.

The European Copernicus programme provides Earth observation and in situ data and a range of services for environmental monitoring. It is intended that these measurements will reduce uncertainties in estimates of carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuel at national and regional levels. This should provide the EU with an independent source to assess the effectiveness of policy measures, and to track progress towards meeting national emission reduction targets.

Thales Alenia Space, which is a joint venture between Thales (67 %) and Leonardo (33 %), has signed a €72 million first tranche contract with OHB System, the prime contractor, to develop the payload for the two C02M satellites.