ESA creates 1 Billion-Pixel GAIA Camera

ESA's ultra-sensitive space astrometry mission was passed on 1 June when the 106 electronic detectors of its billion pixel camera were assembled like a large mosaic for the first time. During its ambitious mission to map one thousand million stars, the spinning GAIA spacecraft will monitor each of these pinpoints of light up to 70 times over a five year period. In order to detect distant stars about one million times fainter than the eye can see, GAIA will carry 106 charge coupled devices (CCDs), each of which is, effectively, a miniature camera.

These rectangular detectors, each measuring 6 × 4.7 cm, with a thickness of only a few tens of microns, are precisely fitted together on the CCD support structure (CSS). The gap between each CCD package is about 1 millimeter.

The contract to provide the Gaia CCDs was awarded to e2v Technologies of Chelmsford, UK, in summer 2005, and their production kept the company busy for more than five years. Each CCD converts incoming light into electrical charge and stores it as a tiny data package, or pixel, until it can be read by the onboard computer. The Gaia CCDs feature 4500 pixels in the along scan direction and 1966 pixels for across scan. With an overall total of about a thousand million pixels, Gaia's focal plane is the largest digital camera ever built for a space mission.