An alternative architecture for the PLATO Mission

Philippe Laporte; Gilles Fasola; Shan Mignot

doi:10.1117/12.856868

9 August 2010 An alternative architecture for the PLATO Mission

Philippe Laporte, Gilles Fasola, Shan Mignot

Proceedings Volume 7731, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2010: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave; 77314J (2010) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.856868
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2010, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

PlaTO (Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) is one of the class M missions proposed to ESA for the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program. It aims to find exoplanets by the transit method and to understand the hosting stars by measuring their oscillations (asterosismology). The same wide field of view of about 1,800 deg² will be observed during 3 years to achieve high precision photometry for a large number of stars (> 250,000). 42 telescopes, each one having 4 CCDs of 3584 x 3584 pixels will be read every 25 seconds generating a huge amount of data which cannot be downloaded to Earth and represents a challenge for the classical software-based data processing solutions. We present in this paper an alternative architecture based on FPGAs for the payload of the PlaTO satellite. The capabilities of the FPGA allows to treat tens of megabits per second through a pipeline driven by the pixel arrivals so that no buffering nor high speed clocks are required. This allows for treating multiple telescopes with a single FPGA and drastically reduce the mass and power budgets. The software resources can then be used to perform complex processing. Our alternative concept thus achieves precision at the theoretical limit together with major system-level improvements on the satellite. It opens the opportunity to achieve the science requirements with a comfortable margin of about 20% or to observe more stars.

Citation Download Citation

Philippe Laporte, Gilles Fasola, and Shan Mignot "An alternative architecture for the PLATO Mission", Proc. SPIE 7731, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2010: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave, 77314J (9 August 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.856868

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available

Members: $17.00

Non-members: $21.00 ADD TO CART

PROCEEDINGS
10 PAGES

DOWNLOAD PAPER SAVE TO MY LIBRARY

GET CITATION

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Get copyright permission Get copyright permission on Copyright Marketplace

KEYWORDS

Charge-coupled devices

Stars

Field programmable gate arrays

Telescopes

Satellites

Photometry

Space telescopes

Show All Keywords

Keywords/Phrases

Search In:

Publication Years