IT IS the daddy of digital cameras. At an amazing 1.5 gigapixels, the image sensor on the European Space Agency’s galaxy-mapping Gaia satellite, due for launch in 2011, will have the picture-sensing area of more than 500 of today’s 6-megapixel digital cameras.
On 10 June, e2v Technologies of Chelmsford, Essex, UK, got the go-ahead from ESA to begin making 170 microchip image sensors that, when placed together on an ultra-flat silicon carbide surface, will provide Gaia’s imaging oomph. ESA chose e2v’s chips because they are made using a proprietary “backthinning” process that reduces the amount of silicon on the sensor,…
