The development and construction of space instruments is one of the strengths of the astrophysics department. It relies primarily on specific engineering skills, but also on the equipment and infrastructures necessary for successfully carrying out instrument developments in compliance with the following needs:
- performance measurements on detectors in the R&D phases,
- integration and metrology of subsystems or instruments during the construction phase, in space quality assurance conditions,
- operating and performance tests on integrated components, subsystems or instruments.
Within the Astrophysics Department, these resources are formally monitored by the Space Quality and Integration Laboratory.
A new platform was created in 2018 and brings together the necessary hardware resources for cryogenic mechanisms designed for infrared astrophysical instruments.
Indeed, since the end of the 1990s, Irfu, via the Systems Engineering Department, has been involved in the design, integration and testing of cryomechanisms: VISIR project in 2004, MIRI imager on the JWST in 2019, and in the future, these mechanisms have been selected for the Euclid space mission NISP instrument, and the METIS instrument which will be installed on the E-ELT in Chile around 2024.
