ales Angnieux aboard NASAs Dawn miion

2015-03-30 : Thales Ang nieux aboard NASAs Dawn mission

Thales Ang nieux aboard NASA's Dawn mission

Cr dit Photo NASA/ JPL Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Thales Ang nieux has been a key partner in NASA's programmes since the successful Ranger 7 and Apollo 11 missions of the early 1960s. Today, it continues to be closely involved in the U.S. space agency's space exploration programme. Two Ang nieux 150-mm-focal-length lenses are on NASA's Dawn probe that recently obtained the first images of the dwarf planet Ceres, after those of Vesta in 2011.

Dawn is the 9th mission of NASA's Discovery programme

Dawn's mission is to study the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres, two protoplanet remnants of the formation of our Solar System that lie in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The significant feature of these two distant bodies is that they are virtually unchanged since their formation 4.6 billion years ago. The 1,300-kg probe's three scientific instruments are designed to image and map Vesta and Ceres, analyse their gravity field and acquire spectral measurements of the abundance and distribution of rocks on their surface, as well as any significant traces of chemical elements. Dawn was launched on 27 September 2007; it then completed a flyby of Mars in February 2009 before reaching Vesta in July 2011, which it studied up close for a year. It arrived at Ceres in February this year and has already sent back incredibly detailed pictures of the dwarf planet. In particular, images acquired on 19 February show two tantalizing bright spots on its surface. Dawn reached orbit around Ceres on Friday 6 March. Its mission is scheduled to end in July.

Demanding specifications for the probe's Ang nieux optics

In 2005, Thales Ang nieux delivered four lenses to German firm Kayser Threde for the Max Planck Institute (MPI), responsible for Dawn's top-tier framing camera subassembly. Two of the lenses were designed for integration with the system and two for testing and preparation. Thales Ang nieux had to meet the challenge of supplying lenses capable of satisfying the mission's particularly exacting thermal constraints ( 50 C, +40 C) while withstanding the rigours of space (vacuum conditions, radiation and launch-vehicle vibrations on lift-off). Drawing on its experience from previous projects working with NASA, Thales Ang nieux designed lenses that fully met these specifications. Employing the principle of passive athermalisation, Ang nieux's lenses are able to acquire clear, sharp pictures in any temperature conditions. Special types of glass were used to withstand radiations, notably gamma rays. The lenses' titanium body offered the best resistance to launch vibrations. Also aboard Dawn's space probe, a Traveling-Wave Tube (TWT) with an X bandwidth for scientific telecommunications (ref. TH 4300C) provided by the Thales group, first worldwide supplier of TWT for satellites and space probes.

Thales is also involved in NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL) is the most ambitious ever to land on the surface of Mars. Thales's Optronics Business Line, to which Thales Ang nieux is attached, supplied the laser for the ChemCam instrument on MSL's Curiosity rover. This laser employing laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) technology is fired at rock targets to generate a plasma that is then analysed by the rover's instruments to determine their mineral composition. ChemCam is a joint effort of the French space agency CNES (Centre National d' Etudes Spatiales) and the U.S. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Since Curiosity arrived on Mars in August 2012, the mission has entered its data-gathering phase.

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