Speaker
Description
Building on the remarkable achievements of Gaia in mapping the Milky Way in multiple dimensions, and in alignment with the ESA Voyage 2050 science programme, advancing galactic astrometry into the near-infrared has emerged as a promising direction for the fourth ESA large class mission. Achieving this goal will depend on significant progress in the development of the mission's detection chain, requiring technologies capable of delivering high-speed, low-noise, and high-precision measurements in the near-infrared range. At the ESA payload validation section (SCI-FIV) in ESTEC, substantial work has focused on strengthening the capabilities of European infrared detectors, with large array, linear mode avalanche photodiodes (LmAPD) in a Mercury Cadmium Telluride (MCT) substrate standing out as a particularly promising solution to meet the demanding mission requirements. This presentation will show the main challenges, results, and way forwards coming from the characterisation performed over the past year.
