Institute of research into the fundamental laws of the Universe

The Near IR Spectrometer Photometer (NISP) is an infrared spectro-photometer that will equip the Euclid Space Telescope (launch planned for 2021) to better understand dark matter and dark energy. After three years of R&D leading to a qualification model, and 6 months for the construction and testing of the flight model, the two NISP cryomotors successfully passed all the acceptance tests in November.  A team of physicists, engineers and technicians from CEA-Irfu is ready to deliver them to the Euclid/NISP instrumental consortium. These cryomotors are designed to rotate the filter and grey carrier wheels¹ that will determine the observation mode of the NISP camera in photometry or spectroscopy. These two modes are essential for measuring the shape and age of galaxies.

¹A grism is a prism whose one side is machined to form a diffraction grating to allow only one wavelength to pass through.