e2v CCD Powers Kepler Telescope

Military & Aerospace Electronics: The CCD image sensors from e2v are part of a CCD camera system from Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. on board of NASA Kepler spacecraft. Ball Aerospace designed and built Kepler's photometer, a 0.95-meter aperture, wide field-of-view Schmidt telescope, with a 1.4-meter primary mirror. With more than 95 megapixels, Kepler's focal plane array of 42 e2v backside illuminated CCD90s forms the largest array of CCDs ever launched into space by NASA.

Each e2v CCD has 2,200 by 1,044 active pixels; 27-micron size; and 28-by-55-millimeter image area. The devices are back thinned for spectral response across the visible and near-infrared range.