
Nuvu Cameras announced the achievement of the qualification of the world's first EMCCD controller designed for extreme low light imaging in a space environment. Nuvu's EMCCD controller, CCCP, is the open secret behind Nuvu Cameras' ultimate EMCCD imaging performance, which expands the frontiers of detection when light is scarce and other technologies are blind. Capable of sub-electron read-out noise, CCCPs, the introduced Space version of the original CCD Controller for Counting Photons, supports all existing EMCCD sensors. CCCPs has been tested and found to meet the requirements in a space-like environment (NASA’s TRL-5). This innovation is a breakthrough accomplishment in order for the EMCCD technology to be integrated as an enhanced imaging solution in future space instruments
Nuvu Camera's technological development roadmap for space opportunities has been laid out with the goal of integrating a future major space mission. CCCPs has been characterized under relevant conditions for optimization to this new environment, all of which will be presented at the 2018 Canadian SmallSat Symposium. Nuvu Cameras' space technology is an enabler technology for the detection, characterization and imaging of exoplanets, search and monitoring of asteroids and space debris, UV imaging, and satellite tracking.
The first flight of Nuvu Cameras' EMCCD space technology is scheduled for September 2018 as the eye of the coronagraph for the High-Contrast Imaging Balloon System project led by Professor Simon Thibault from the University Laval. This project, with multiple worldwide contributors in government, universities and private institutions, is a high tech optical payload mission. It is designed to test the technology that has the potential of finding a life-sustaining exoplanet. The demonstration project will first fly in a Canadian Space Agency stratospheric balloon that will reach a peak altitude of 40 kilometres. A second flight is already expected to launch in 2020 from Australia.
Nuvu Cameras' EMCCD technology is renowned internationally for its unrivalled imaging sensitivity, for ground- and now space-based applications. Thanks to the support of the Canadian Space Agency and its partners in the space industry, Nuvu Camera is on its way to introduce a new Canadian signature technology into space.