NASA officials visit Marconi Applied Technologies

FEBRUARY 14--Senior Hubble Space Telescope (HST) personnel from NASA visited Marconi Applied Technologies on Tuesday, 15 January 2002, to celebrate the completion of the company's involvement in the HST project. Four scientists from the space agency attended the meeting, held at company headquarters (Chelmsford, Essex, England; www.marconitech.com), giving talks to the production teams. Marconi Applied Technologies has been working closely with NASA since 1996, developing and manufacturing a series of charged-coupled-device (CCD) imaging sensors for use on two of the main Hubble instruments in June 2000 and July 2001.

Marconi has supplied two CCDs as reserve devices for the Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveying, due to launch at the end of February 2002. This will be followed by the launch of the seminal Wide Field Camera 3 in February 2004, which will contain two Marconi CCDs for the flight camera together with spare chips. That mission is expected to capture a wider planetary field than previously possible.

Hubble project manger for Marconi Applied Technologies, Wolfgang Suske, remarked: "This visit represents an exciting milestone in our six-year association with NASA, and we are delighted to have welcomed our friends to the site so near the crucial launch date."