Optical design of an high resolution imaging channel for the Bepi Colombo space mission

This paper describes the optical design criteria and expected image quality of the High Resolution Imaging Channel (HRIC), which is part of the Spectrometers and Imagers for Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) BepiColombo Integrated Observatory SYStem (SIMBIO-SYS) suite, for imaging and spectroscopic investigation of Mercury. SIMBIO-SYS has been selected by ESA as part of the scientific payload of the ESA BepiColombo mission to Mercury. HRIC has the main objective of characterising Mercury surface features with a very high spatial resolution in the visible. The optical design has been optimised to achieve the stringent scientific requirement of 5 m ground pixel size at 400 km from the planet surface. The adopted catadioptric optical configuration provides a resolution of 2.5"/pixel for a pixel size of 10 micron. The focal ratio is F#8 in order to be diffraction limited at 400 nm and to optimise radiometric flux and overall mechanical dimensions. The optical design solution includes two hyperbolic mirrors optimized with a dioptric camera, in order to correct the field of view of 1.47°, covered by a detector of 2k x 2k pixels. The mixed (reflective + refractive) solution guarantees a good balance of achieved optical performances and optimisation of resources (mainly volume and mass). The adopted configuration corrects and transmits well over the whole band of observation (400 - 900 nm).