E. Medinaceli

On-board data processing for the near infrared spectrograph and photometer instrument (NISP) of the EUCLID mission

The Near Infrared Spectrograph and Photometer (NISP) is one of the two instruments on board the EUCLID mission now under implementation phase; VIS, the Visible Imager is the second instrument working on the same shared optical beam. The NISP focal plane is based on a detector mosaic deploying 16x, 2048x2048 pixels^2 HAWAII-II HgCdTe detectors, now in advanced delivery phase from Teledyne Imaging Scientific (TIS), and will provide NIR imaging in three bands (Y, J, H) plus slit-less spectroscopy in the range 0.9÷2.0 micron. All the NISP observational modes will be supported by different parametrization of the classic multi-accumulation IR detector readout mode covering the specific needs for spectroscopic, photometric and calibration exposures. Due to the large number of deployed detectors and to the limited satellite telemetry available to ground, a consistent part of the data processing, conventionally performed off-line, will be accomplished on board, in parallel with the flow of data acquisitions. This has led to the development of a specific on-board, HW/SW, data processing pipeline, and to the design of computationally performing control electronics, suited to cope with the time constraints of the NISP acquisition sequences during the sky survey. In this paper we present the architecture of the NISP on-board processing system, directly interfaced to the SIDECAR ASICs system managing the detector focal plane, and the implementation of the on-board pipe-line allowing all the basic operations of input frame averaging, final frame interpolation and data-volume compression before ground down-link.

Instrument workstation for the EGSE of the Near Infrared Spectro-Photometer instrument (NISP) of the EUCLID mission

The NISP instrument on board the Euclid ESA mission will be developed and tested at different levels of integration using various test equipment which shall be designed and procured through a collaborative and coordinated effort. The NISP Instrument Workstation (NI-IWS) will be part of the EGSE configuration that will support the NISP AIV/AIT activities from the NISP Warm Electronics level up to the launch of Euclid. One workstation is required for the NISP EQM/AVM, and a second one for the NISP FM. Each workstation will follow the respective NISP model after delivery to ESA for Payload and Satellite AIV/AIT and launch. At these levels the NI-IWS shall be configured as part of the Payload EGSE, the System EGSE, and the Launch EGSE, respectively. After launch, the NI-IWS will be also re-used in the Euclid Ground Segment in order to support the Commissioning and Performance Verification (CPV) phase, and for troubleshooting purposes during the operational phase. The NI-IWS is mainly aimed at the local storage in a suitable format of the NISP instrument data and metadata, at local retrieval, processing and display of the stored data for on-line instrument assessment, and at the remote retrieval of the stored data for off-line analysis on other computers. We describe the design of the IWS software that will create a suitable interface to the external systems in each of the various configurations envisaged at the different levels, and provide the capabilities required to monitor and verify the instrument functionalities and performance throughout all phases of the NISP lifetime.

Detailed design and first tests of the application software for the instrument control unit of Euclid-NISP

In this paper we describe the detailed design of the application software (ASW) of the instrument control unit (ICU) of NISP, the Near-Infrared Spectro-Photometer of the Euclid mission. This software is based on a real-time operating system (RTEMS) and will interface with all the subunits of NISP, as well as the command and data management unit (CDMU) of the spacecraft for telecommand and housekeeping management. We briefly review the main requirements driving the design and the architecture of the software that is approaching the Critical Design Review level. The interaction with the data processing unit (DPU), which is the intelligent subunit controlling the detector system, is described in detail, as well as the concept for the implementation of the failure detection, isolation and recovery (FDIR) algorithms. The first version of the software is under development on a Breadboard model produced by AIRBUS/CRISA. We describe the results of the tests and the main performances and budgets.