Lynred, a global provider of infrared detectors for aerospace, defense and commercial markets, has been chosen to develop a new linear SWIR (shortwave infrared) array for the European Copernicus Land Surface Temperature Monitoring (LSTM) mission.
Airbus Defence & Space (ADS), the prime contractor in the LSTM mission, selected Lynred to develop the SWIR array. It will be integrated into an imager; a high-resolution radiometer that measures land-surface temperatures.
The overall aim of LSTM is to improve sustainable agricultural productivity at field-scale in regions experiencing increasing water scarcity and climate variability.
“Lynred has a long track record in developing and manufacturing SWIR detectors for space instruments. We trust in Lynred’s capacity and technological performance to tackle the challenges in this program and deliver the LSTM SWIR detector according to our expectations,” said Vincent Chorvalli, LSTM instrument project manager at ADS.
Lynred’s SWIR detector will capture infrared light at three different wavelengths (0.945 µm, 1.375 µm and 1.61 µm). Its design will meet the special needs of the mission, notably a linear array with four different lines (the line at 0.945 µm being duplicated according to mission needs) of 1,200 pixels each in the across-track satellite velocity direction and 12 pixels in the long-track scanning direction (scanning methods are used to acquire a multispectral image). The 12 pixels will enable the implementation of a TDI (Time-Delay Integration) operation – a signal-to-noise ratio improvement method employed to enhance image quality – directly on the detector chip. As a consequence, the interface toward detector electronics is significantly simplified for global detection chain design optimization.
Lynred will deliver the first flight model by the end of 2023. The company has previously contracted with ADS on other space missions, such as Sentinel 2, Sentinel 5, Microcarb and METImage.