IRIS Calibration and Performance Workshop 2026

Website link: https://indico.ict.inaf.it/e/IRISworkshop2026

Workshop Scope

The primary objective of the workshop is to perform a comparative analysis of calibration strategies adopted by current space missions operating in the infrared domain, with emphasis on evaluating their achieved scientific and instrumental performance. The workshop will focus on identifying key calibration challenges and examining the diverse methodological approaches employed to address them. This will be achieved by engaging international specialists in the field to present calibration schemes and the latest results from operational missions, as well as the ongoing work of missions currently under development.

Particular emphasis will be placed on operational experience from contemporary space telescopes, enabling cross-disciplinary knowledge transfer among instrumentation specialists and scientific teams with mission-specific objectives. This will also serve to disseminate established best practices and empirically derived lessons learned from current infrared missions. Recent advances in infrared detector technology will be presented, and emerging mission concepts will illustrate strategies for leveraging these developments.

Scientific Programme Overview

The workshop mainly addresses the topics covered in the following six sessions.

• Space Missions Overview

Review of operating and upcoming space observatories equipped with state-of-the-art infrared sensors.

• Technology Development / New Mission Concepts

The latest advances in infrared detectors and front-end electronics technologies are presented, along with their prospective use in future mission concepts.

• Data Acquisition / Signal Estimation

Different approaches to data acquisition and signal estimation strategies are compared, with particular emphasis on innovative techniques.

• Infrared Detector Characterisation

Support activities for detector development, including testing and characterisation, are discussed. Specific methodologies for assessing key detector effects are presented, along with the main simulation toolkits for infrared detectors.  

• Pre-launch Characterisation Strategies

Overview of mission-specific approaches for end-to-end characterisation of the signal detection chain. 

• In-flight Calibration and Performance

Case studies illustrating how detector systematics propagate through data processing and calibration pipelines, and how they impact overall performance.