First 3 Megapixel test image from prototype Ultra-compact Imaging System (UCIS) being proposed for planetary mission application. The custom CMOS detector is 7mm on a side, and incorporates a readout chip "folded" and sparse-bonded onto the back of the image detector.

At the heart of nearly every instrument is a detector. In spaceborne instruments, this device converts some natural phenomenon into tiny electrical impulses. The impulses are then amplified, processed, and converted into digital data streams that can be transmitted to the ground, further processed, and finally turned into a pictorial representation of the original natural phenomenon that was being sensed at the spacecraft. For the Visible and Infrared Imaging and Spectrometers discipline, these detectors sense photons of light focused through optics to form a "scene" of what the instrument is "seeing."

With its evolution beginning millions of years ago, our retina, and that of other animals, is a very sophisticated detector of visible light photons that have been focused through our pupil, lens and eye into an image. Electrochemical processing through our neurons forms an image in our mind. Electronic imaging detectors entered the digital age in the late 20th Century, and today abound in digital cameras and many cell phones.

There is an ever-pressing desire to expand the range and quality of detectors used on space missions. Today's myriad imaging detectors operate in the x-ray, ultraviolet, visible, and infrared portions of the spectrum. Different wavelength ranges, smaller size, higher resolution, lower noise, greater uniformity, stable calibration, higher sensitivity, greater dynamic range, polarization, and a number of other parameters are sought in succeeding generations of detectors.

People at JPL develop a range of detectors for space instrument applications. Our development work takes place in-house, and in cooperation with industry, universities, and other Government laboratories. JPL's CCD Lab performs numerous functions certifying, characterizing, and qualifying detectors from all sources for "flight hardware" aboard missions like Cassini, the Mars Exploration Rovers, Mars Science Laboratory, and other NASA and even non-NASA missions. Half the world's population has seen pictures from space the quality of which is the result of painstaking design work, screening, and qualification at JPL. JPL's Microdevices Laboratory (MDL) has a broad range of sophisticated tools and instrumentation used to develop and manufacture new detector types.