Description
The ARRAKIHS (Analysis of Resolved Remnants of Accreted galaxies as a Key Instrument for Halo Surveys) has been selected for the European Space Agency (ESA)’s second fast (F-2) space mission, planned launch in 2030. The ARRAKIHS mission aims to study the nature of dark matter, arguably the biggest mystery in astronomy and cosmology, by observing the low-surface brightness features around a large number of external galaxies similar in size to our Galaxy, the Milky Way. After a trade-off study, Teledyne e2v (Te2v)’s CIS304 CMOS detector has been chosen for the baseline visible (VIS) detectors. The ARRAKIHS mission will be the first high-precision optical astronomy mission to utilise a low-noise CMOS imager, instead of the traditional CCDs. Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UCL is leading the characterization work for this new CMOS detector manufactured by Te2v, a UK-based company. We summarise the mission concept of ARRAKIHS and report the development of our detector characterisation work in collaboration with Te2v and ESA.
