Focal Plane Array For The Gerb Instrument

The Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget (GERB) instrument is an Earth observing scientific payload launched on-board the European Space Agency Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite in September 2002. The instrument measures reflected and emitted radiation in two wavebands, 0.3 - 4 mum and 4 - 30 mum. The focal plane consists of a 256-element thermoelectric linear array operating at similar to300 K and four application specific integrated circuits (ASIC) providing parallel amplification, filtering and digitisation. This paper describes in detail the design, operation and performance of the GERB focal plane array.