Teledyne Technologies Inc. has delivered infrared sensor chip assemblies to be used on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, NASA’s next flagship astronomy space observatory planned to be launched in 2027.
The Roman will survey billions of galaxies and study thousands of exoplanets with its wide-field view using a new generation of infrared detector developed by Teledyne Imaging Sensors, a Camarillo subsidiary of Teledyne, in Thousand Oaks.
The company said it has delivered 28 flight-quality sensor chip assemblies, four more than required in the $23 million contract it received in 2018 to develop and manufacture them.
In an announcement, the company said 18 of the assemblies are in what’s called the focal plane of the telescope and they total more than 300 million pixels. “This is by far the largest infrared focal plane ever made, for space or ground-based facilities,” the statement said.
In addition to the infrared arrays, Teledyne is producing the visible light detectors that will be used in the coronograph instrument of the Roman Space Telescope, it added.
Shares in Teledyne (TDY) closed up $2.08, or about 0.5 percent, to $434.64 on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, a day when the Dow Jones industrial average closed up 0.1 percent.