ESA funds world’s first space flight particle contamination monitor

The Northampton-based company designs and manufactures highly specialised custom and low-volume complex digital camera systems – providing bespoke imaging sensors – for challenging scientific applications, including space. The latest funding will enable it reach its final launch goals, the company said.

It follows an 8-year technical development programme in collaboration with the agency, and it will support the manufacture of its Space Particle Fall Out (PFO) Monitor. This is due to launch into space inside a rocket launch vehicle fairing in the summer of 2025.

The prototype already developed is pictured above.

Cleanliness

The Space PFO, right, will be the first instrument to measure particulate contamination inside a rocket fairing during, and shortly after launch, highlights the company. It is believed that contamination can seriously affect the accuracy and reliability of the multi-million dollar instruments which are sent into space, whether to study Earth or explore the universe.

“Up to now, the cleanliness levels of ESA missions are carefully controlled during assembly, integration and testing, especially for sensitive payloads like those of Science and Earth monitoring,” said Riccardo Rampini, head of Materials’ Physics and Chemistry section in ESA/ESTEC and technical officer of this activity.

“However, what happens to the satellites in the last days on Earth and once they are on their way to orbit remains a mystery. We are looking forward to having a technology game changer in the field of cleanliness and contamination control that will allow us to monitor, and hopefully improve, the particulate contamination levels during launch.”

According to XCAM, the Space PFO Monitor provides a remote, automated, real-time method of detecting particulate contamination down to the five-micron level in a rocket fairing during and shortly after launch.

The hope is that this will provide valuable data to demonstrate whether or not the valuable cargos, such as Earth-observing satellites, stay clean on their way into space. It is designed to withstand the varying vibration, shock, acoustic, pressure, temperature and humidity environments experienced during launch and can be deployed across a range of different launch vehicle families.

Launch goal

“We are grateful to ESA for their continued support over the last 8 years in the development, manufacturing and testing of prototypes, of this unique instrument,” said Karen Holland, CEO of XCAM. “This next tranche of funding takes us to our final launch goal and we are delighted that ESA have the confidence that XCAM can continue to lead the way on these difficult and complex technology development programmes and deliver to their exacting quality standards.”

Following the development of the space system prototypes, XCAM has also adapted the PFO technology for commercial use, and distributes the PFO 1040 real-time surface particulate contamination monitoring system to cleanrooms and clean assembly plants worldwide.

It cites this as an example of the spin-out of space-derived technology to the wider world.

Nottingham

In October last year, Nottingham University’s Aerospace Unlocking Potential (UP) programme pledged £110,000 in funding to three UK businesses working to improve sustainability in the aerospace sector.

One of them was XCAM, and this was to develop the PFO monitor, in order to detect and analyse the more complex particulates.

The new monitor will include the capability to use neural networks for analysis in space that will, ultimately, minimise the limitations inherent to downlinking data to Earth.

See also: SPRINT backs UK five space tech projects

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