The Nüvü Cameras electron-multiplying camera technology used in NASA’s upcoming Roman Observation Satellite will soon be available for low Earth orbit (LEO) nanosatellites.
Nüvü Cameras, the Montreal-based company that creates and builds EMCCD (electron-multiplying charged coupling device) camera technology, announced recently that thanks to a Canadian Space Agency (CSA) contract they will be beginning to produce technology for CubeSat and nanosatellites called nüSpace.
Electron multiplying cameras
“Charged coupling devices” (CCD) are the well-known technology at the centre of almost all digital photography. They’re the plates that a digital camera (whether a professional camera or a smartphone camera) uses to turn photons into electrical impulses. The development of CCDs has been central to the growth of digital photography, as the number of pixels in each image has risen seemingly exponentially.
What differs in “EMCCD” cameras is in their sensitivity to photons and how they convert those photons into electrons. CCDs can still struggle to take pictures in dark environments, though, and attempts to simply increase exposure often lead to noisy or simply unusable images. EMCCD technology can take the photoelectrons created by the CCD and multiply them, creating nighttime images that look bright as day and letting you see the faintest and darkest of objects. Even single photon events can be turned into useful data.
The process isn’t easy. Noise and interference is a constant problem. Readout noise from amplification, errant electromagnetic signals, and even the “thermal noise” coming from atomic motion in the EMCCD chip can introduce unwanted electrons into the signal.
Nüvü’s technology at the heart of NASA’s new Telescope
Resolving these issues has been the main focus of Nüvü’s technological development, with their focus being on the electronics controlling the sensor. Nüvü’s Laurence Déziel, High Tech Marketing & Exports, said in an email exchange with SpaceQ that their “Controller for Counting Photons” technology “optimizes the sensor’s detection capabilities and significantly limits the noise created during imaging.”
Déziel said that they “are pioneers in bringing EMCCD technology to space,” and created the first camera qualified for operation in space-like environments. Their website details a variety of space and defence applications that they’re focusing on: space-based surveillance, night-time observation, adaptive optics, and high-resolution spectroscopy, among others.
One particular application, exoplanet imagery, is the reason why Nüvü became involved with NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The Roman is a new billion-dollar telescope with mostly-expanded capabilities compared to the current Hubble telescope.
Nüvü’s EMCCD technology will be incorporated into the telescope’s Coronagraph Instrument, which allows observation of exoplanets by using a brace of different technologies to dramatically reduce the glare from their host star. Exoplanets surrounding faraway stars become detectable, even if they’re as small as a single pixel. Nüvü is working with ABB to incorporate their EMCCD technology into the Coronagraph camera cores, to ensure that even the faintest indications of exoplanets aren’t missed.
nüSpace bring EMCCD’s to cubeSats
This latest announcement shows how Nüvü is broadening out into the larger space market. After the CSA already gave them a CAD $1 million award in 2021 to continue their technological development, it was followed up in April of this year with a manufacturing authorization.
Their new camera electronics core, called nüSpace, will be optimized for a 6U CubeSat in LEO. NüSpace was designed by Nüvü with the “support and advice” of the University of Montreal’s Prof. René Doyon and his team, as well as Dr. Leon K. Harding, Research Associate Professor and Assistant Director at Virginia Tech, and his team. Doyon’s team contributed their experience with exoplanet exploration and space missions, while Harding’s team helped with spacecraft and mission design, implementation and operation.
Déziel said that “applications for the new product are extremely varied, as any space-based imaging application can fit.” EMCCD cameras can be used “as a high-speed imager suited for adaptive optics, which are used to correct for distortions in the signal wavefront and thus drastically enhance image quality,” can be used for exoplanet imaging even outside of the Roman Telescope context, and can be (according to their release) can improve space domain awareness (SDA) to enable the “detection of smaller and faster objects regardless of their composition”.
Nüvü’s Emile Baulieu went into more detail on one key application for fast object detection in a recent issue of Photonics Spectra, where he pointed to the increasing problem of space debris detection as an issue that EMCCD may be able to help solve. Radio waves miss smaller objects due to their long wavelength and higher diffraction limits, regular CCD cameras using long exposures introduce noise and streaking, and lidar has range issues.
EMCCD may be vital in enhancing optical cameras’ role in this detection, ensuring that even small, quickly moving, low-albedo objects can be properly detected and tracked before they pose a danger to satellites and other spacecraft. Déziel said that “the same advantages can be applied to satellite monitoring in the defense sector.”