The origins space telescope and the heterodyne receiver for origins (HERO)
Paper in proceeding, 2019

The Origins Space Telescope is one of four large mission concept studies carried out by NASA for the 2020 Decadal survey. Origins is a far-infrared telescope designed to understand the evolution of galaxies and black holes, to follow the trail of water from protostars to habitable planets and to search for biosignatures in the atmospheres of exoplanets. The Heterodyne Receiver for Origins (HERO) is the high spectral resolution receiver. It is the first heterodyne array receiver designed to fly on a satellite and an example for possible future focal plane arrays for space. HERO has focal plane arrays with nine pixels in two polarization. HERO covers a large frequency range between 486 and 2700 GHz in only 4 frequency bands, requiring local oscillators with fractional bandwidth of 45%. HERO uses the best superconducting mixers with noise temperatures between 1 and 3 hf/k and an intermediate bandwidth of 6 to 8 GHz. HERO can carry out dual polarization and dual-frequency observations. The major challenges for the HERO design are the low cooling power and the low electrical power available on a spacecraft, which impact the choice of the cryogenic amplifiers and backends. SiGe cryogenic amplifiers with a consumption of less than 0.5 mW, as well as CMOS spectrometers with a power consumption below 2W are the baseline for HERO. The development plan includes broadband (45%) multiplier-amplifier chains, low noise mixers (1-3 hf/k), low-power consuming (< 05.mW) cryogenic amplifiers and low-power consuming spectrometer backends (< 2W).

Submillimeter

Space technology

Astronomy

Array receiver

Terahertz

Author

M.C. Wiedner

Pierre and Marie Curie University (UPMC)

A. M. Baryshev

University of Groningen

Victor Belitsky

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Onsala Space Observatory

Other publications Research

Vincent Desmaris

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Onsala Space Observatory

Other publications Research

Anna Maria Digiorgio

Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)

J. D. Gallego

Yebes Observatory

M. Gerin

Pierre and Marie Curie University (UPMC)

P. F. Goldsmith

California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

F. Helmich

University of Groningen

Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON)

W. Jellema

University of Groningen

Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON)

Andre Laurens

Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES)

Imran Mehdi

California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

Christophe Risacher

Max Planck Society

Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM)

Other publications Research

A. Cooray

University of California at Irvine (UCI)

Margaret Meixner

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Johns Hopkins University

Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)

ISSTT 2019 - 30th International Symposium on Space Terahertz Technology, Proceedings Book

204-207

2019 30th International Symposium on Space Terahertz Technology, ISSTT 2019
Gothenburg, Sweden,

Subject Categories (SSIF 2011)

Aerospace Engineering

Signal Processing

Other Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering

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4/14/2025

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