Québec City based ABB has been awarded a $2.25 million contract from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) for the Cosmological Advanced Survey Telescope for Optical and UV Research (CASTOR) concept.
The contract is the first from a CSA procurement notice for seven priority technologies announced last November. The ABB contract is for the priority technology #1 ,Wide-Field Astronomical Imaging in UV/Optical. The other priority technologies identified in the November procurement were;
- Enabling Technologies for the Exploration of New Worlds – microsatellite opportunity
- Enabling Technologies for the Exploration of New Worlds – technologies for future payload opportunities
- Mass and Volume Reduction for Planetary Exploration Instrument
- SAR High Speed On-Board Processing
- Cloud-computing for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) processing
- Block Chaining in service of Earth Observation Big Data
Announcements related to the reminder priority technologies could be coming in the next few months.
CASTOR Telescope
The Canadian Astronomical Society was identified CASTOR as a major project (more than $100 million) that should be pursued in its decadal plan released last fall.
“As proposed, CASTOR is a 1-meter class space telescope concept on a small satellite platform that would make a unique contribution to astrophysics by providing wide field, high-resolution imaging in the UV and optical spectral region, surpassing any ground-based optical telescope in image sharpness. To achieve these goals the payload presents challenging demands on optical telescope design and structure, detector systems, coatings and in its wavefront and pointing stability requirements.”
“A concept study was completed in 2012 for a 1-m class wide field space telescope with a large focal plane array. A Science Maturation Study (SMS) completed in 2019 elaborated on the science objectives in cosmology and other fields of astrophysics and derived the mission and payload requirements.”
ABB will address the following technologies in this contract “structured into five work packages (WP)”:
- WP1. Telescope: optical and mechanical design, structure, material.
- WP2. Focal plane: assess large detector types, mosaics, readouts, mountings, coatings.
- WP3. Fine steering mirror: tip-tilt and focus mechanism within the main optical path.
- WP4. UV spectrometer: medium resolution multi-object using a Digital Micro-mirror Device (DMD).
- WP5. Precision photometer: Parts Per Million (PPM) photometry with a separate detector array at each band.
The Canadian astronomy community will be pleased that this potential major space telescope is moving forward to the next stage.