From the incredible pictures of outer space taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to the digital images through the eyes of the professional photographer, Fairchild Imaging has been developing electronic imaging devices for virtually every high-performance imaging application.

Today, in the aerospace market, Fairchild Imaging CCD sensors are on board the NASA Cassini mission to explore Saturn as well as the Huygens mission which has landed on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Our back-illuminated CCD sensors have recently launched on the NASA Deep Impact Mission to discover the composition of the comet, Tempel 1. In addition to space exploration, Fairchild Imaging CCD sensors are integral components in astronomy, aerial reconnaissance and satellite mapping.

The product architecture spans from the small format (256 x 256) CCD for cockpit display to the 12K (12,288 x 128 elements) time delay integration (TDI) devices to the 9K x 9K (9,216 x 9,216 pixels) CCD used in aerial mapping and aerial reconnaissance applications. Wafer scale CCD imagers such as these are our speciality.

Many products require custom specifications as directed by our OEM customers. Fairchild Imaging is very responsive to our customers' needs and many of our technology advancements have been directly attributed to customer requirements. Much of our experience is in the custom tailoring of CCDs for spectral response, unusual readout and unique packages for various environmental conditions.

Varied process applications of color filters, microlenslets, fiber optics, scintillators and backside thinning add to our extensive background. We are also very adept at the processes and design know-how necessary for manufacturing space-qualified CCD imagers.

The following is a partial listing of available CCDs and their associated past programs/applications where Fairchild Imaging has provided CCDs:

Aerospace, Astronomy and Satellite Mapping

• CCD 143 2048 x 1 linear CCD for Mars Observer, SPOT
• CCD 181 2592 x 1 linear CCD for Telecine
• CCD 191 6000 x 1 linear CCD for I-SPOT
• CCD 412 512 x 1024 frame transfer CCD for Star Tracker
• CCD 424 1024 x 1024 back illuminated SFT CCD for Deep Impact
• CCD 447 2048 x 2048 back illuminated full frame CCD for EPIC Triana
• CCD 485 4096 x 4097 full frame CCD for astronomy
• CCD 486 4096 x 4096 back illuminated full frame CCD for astronomy

Aerial Reconnaissance

• CCD 595 9216 x 9216 (9k x 9k) CCD for aerial reconnaissance
• CCD 10121 12,128 (12k) x 128 TDI CCD for aerial reconnaissance

Event Recording

• CCD 456 512 x 512 interline CCD for high speed imaging