Design of the VenSpec-H instrument on ESA’s EnVision mission: development of critical elements, highlighting the wavefront corrector and grating

EnVision is the European Space Agency’s upcoming mission to Venus with a launch scheduled in 2031. One of the payloads on board is the Venus Spectrometers (VenSpec) suite, containing three spectrometer channels, one of which is Venus Spectrometer with high resolution (VenSpec-H). VenSpec-H performs absorption measurements in the atmosphere of Venus in four near-infrared spectral bands. VenSpec-H is developed under Belgian management and builds on heritage from instruments on Venus Express and Trace Gas Orbiter. The operating wavelength range (1.15 to 2.5 μm) imposes stringent temperature requirements on the instrument to make nightside measurements below the Venus clouds possible. Most importantly, the spectrometer’s optical components are held in a separate cold section inside the instrument, cooled down to −45°C, to remove the thermal background from the signal. Some passive optical elements in the cold spectrometer had low technological readiness at the start of the project. One of them is a wavefront corrector: the freeform corrector plate, used to compensate for aberrations introduced in the system by a parabolic mirror. This device is developed by the Brussels Photonics lab of Vrije Universiteit Brussel using a supply chain with shape-adaptive corrective polishing and dedicated metrology. Another is the echelle grating, used to disperse the incoming light into its spectral components, which is built by Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems. We highlight the manufacturing and metrology processes of both devices. Besides that, some mechanisms, placed in the warmer part of the instrument, had to be developed: a turn window unit to protect the interior of the instrument during the aerobraking phase of the mission, a filter wheel mechanism to select the spectral bands of interest, and an integrated detector cooler assembly to register the spectra.

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Journal
Journal of Applied Remote Sensing
Published
2025-03-27
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1117/1.jrs.19.014523
Primary Topic
Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Design of the VenSpec-H instrument on ESA’s EnVision mission: development of critical elements, highlighting the wavefront corrector and grating

Lars Jacobs, Michael Vervaeke, B. Borguet, Étienne Renotte et al.
Journal of Applied Remote Sensing
Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing
article

Design of the VenSpec-H instrument on ESA’s EnVision mission: development of critical elements, highlighting the wavefront corrector and grating

Lars Jacobs, Michael Vervaeke, B. Borguet, Étienne Renotte, Roderick De Cock, Aaron Algoedt, Emmanuel Marcq, W. Moelans, Ian Thomas, Lieve De Vos, David Bolsée, Neophytos Messios, Taras Gerya, S. Kögl, J. Helbert, Nuno Pereira, Ignacio Torralbo, L. M. Lara, Paul James Tackley, Erwin De Donder, Justin Erwin, Hugo Thienpont, Giulia Alemanno, Elena Roibás-Millán, Pieter Bogaert, Bram Beeckman, Séverine Robert, Eddy Neefs, Sophie Berkenbosch, Ann Carine Vandaele, José Miguel Álvarez, Jose Maria Castro, Bojan Ristic, Daphne Stam, Moshe Blau, Ansje Brassine, Paola Kögl, Florian Wirz, Higinio Rubio-Arnaldo, Solal Thomas, Hans-Peter Gröbelbauer, G. Székely, P.F.A. Klinkenberg, Nick Eaton, Ramatha Sørensen, Daniel Navajas Ortega, Jaime Jiménez Ortega
article en

Abstract

EnVision is the European Space Agency’s upcoming mission to Venus with a launch scheduled in 2031. One of the payloads on board is the Venus Spectrometers (VenSpec) suite, containing three spectrometer channels, one of which is Venus Spectrometer with high resolution (VenSpec-H). VenSpec-H performs absorption measurements in the atmosphere of Venus in four near-infrared spectral bands. VenSpec-H is developed under Belgian management and builds on heritage from instruments on Venus Express and Trace Gas Orbiter. The operating wavelength range (1.15 to 2.5 μm) imposes stringent temperature requirements on the instrument to make nightside measurements below the Venus clouds possible. Most importantly, the spectrometer’s optical components are held in a separate cold section inside the instrument, cooled down to −45°C, to remove the thermal background from the signal. Some passive optical elements in the cold spectrometer had low technological readiness at the start of the project. One of them is a wavefront corrector: the freeform corrector plate, used to compensate for aberrations introduced in the system by a parabolic mirror. This device is developed by the Brussels Photonics lab of Vrije Universiteit Brussel using a supply chain with shape-adaptive corrective polishing and dedicated metrology. Another is the echelle grating, used to disperse the incoming light into its spectral components, which is built by Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems. We highlight the manufacturing and metrology processes of both devices. Besides that, some mechanisms, placed in the warmer part of the instrument, had to be developed: a turn window unit to protect the interior of the instrument during the aerobraking phase of the mission, a filter wheel mechanism to select the spectral bands of interest, and an integrated detector cooler assembly to register the spectra.

Journal of Applied Remote SensingVol. 19(01)
Leiden University (NL), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (BE), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (FR), Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BE), Université Paris-Saclay (FR), Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (CH), Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. (DLR) (DE), FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (CH), ETH Zurich (CH), Sorbonne Université (FR), ON Semiconductor (Belgium) (BE), Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (FR), Flanders Make (Belgium) (BE), Laboratoire atmosphères, milieux, observations spatiales (FR), Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (ES), Leiden Observatory, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (CH), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (ES)
Belgian Federal Science Policy Office, Agencia Estatal de Investigación
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Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing
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