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The Heterodyne Receiver for Origins (HERO) is the first detailed study of a heterodyne focal plane array receiver for space applications. HERO gives the Origins Space Telescope the capability to observe at very high spectral resolution (R = 107) over an unprecedentedly large far-infrared (FIR) wavelengths range (111 to 617 μm) with high sensitivity, with simultaneous dual polarization and dual-frequency band operation. The design is based on prior successful heterodyne receivers, such as Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared /Herschel, but surpasses it by one to two orders of magnitude by exploiting the latest technological developments. Innovative components are used to keep the required satellite resources low and thus allowing for the first time a convincing design of a large format heterodyne array receiver for space. HERO on Origins is a unique tool to explore the FIR universe and extends the enormous potential of submillimeter astronomical spectroscopy into new areas of astronomical research.

PLATO is an M-class mission (M3) of the European Space Agency (ESA) whose launch is scheduled in 2026. The main aim of the mission is the detection and characterization of terrestrial exoplanets orbiting around bright solar-type star. The payload consists of 26 small telescopes: 24 "normal" cameras and 2 "fast" cameras. The huge amount of data produced by the PLATO telescopes is acquired and processed on-board by the Data Processing System (DPS) made up by various processing electronic units. The DPS of the PLATO instrument comprises the Normal and Fast DPUs (Data Processing Units) and a single ICU (Instrument Control Unit), are data routed through a SpaceWire network. The topic of this paper is the description of the architecture of the ICU and its role within the DPS, the status of the Avionic Validation Model (AVM) testing at the end of the Unit Preliminary Design Review (UPDR) performed by ESA and the results of the test of the first engineering model.

ARIEL, the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey mission1-3 was selected in early 2018 by the European Space Agency (ESA) as the fourth medium-class mission (M4) launch opportunity of the Cosmic Vision Program, with an expected launch in late 2028. It is the first mission dedicated to the analysis of the chemical composition and thermal structures of up to a thousand transiting exoplanets atmospheres, which will expand planetary science far beyond the limits of our current knowledge.

In this paper we describe the activities towards the design of a common framework for the Instrument Control and Data Processing Units for the three scientific payload instruments on board the joint ESA-JAXA SPICA mission, currently at the end of its phase A study. In this context, we started a program to assess modular architectures based on the use of a quad-core fault-tolerant LEON4 SPARC V8 processor on a SpaceWire network. We will describe the results of our initial tests using both Asymmetric Multi processing (AMP) and Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP) configurations. In addition, the possibility to adopt the RTEMS real time operating system, already space qualified on single core processors, will be evaluated both in terms of latency performances and of dynamical allocation of the resources. Finally, we will present the outline of the way forward for the next phases of the SPICA project.

The Herschel space telescope hosts two infrared photometers having an unprecedented resolution, sensitivity and dynamic range. The map making, i.e. the formation of sky images from the instruments' data, is critical for the full exploitation of the satellite and is a difficult task, since the readouts are affected by several disturbances, most notably by correlated noise. An effective map making approach is based on generalized least squares (GLS). However, when applied to Herschel data this approach poses several challenges and requires a specific pre- and post-processing. In the paper, we describe these challenges and introduce a set of algorithms and procedures which successfully address the issues. We also describe the implementation of the procedures and how these are integrated into an image formation software called UNIMAP, which is the first GLS map maker capable of automatically producing quality Herschel images with manageable memory and complexity requirements.

This paper presents the latest developments on the VIALACTEA Science Gateway in the context of the FP7 VIALACTEA project. This science gateway operates as a central workbench for the VIALACTEA community in order to allow astronomers to process the new-generation (from Infrared to Radio) surveys of the Galactic Plane to build and deliver a quantitative 3D model of our Milky Way Galaxy. The final model will be used as a template for external galaxies to study star formation across the cosmic time. The adopted AGILE software development process allowed to fulfill the community needs in terms of required workflows and underlying resources monitoring. The scientific requirements arose during the process highlighted the needs for easy parameter setting, fully embarrassingly parallel computations and large-scale input dataset processing. Therefore the science gateway based on the WS-PGRADE/gUSE framework has been able to fulfill the requirements mainly exploiting the parameter sweep paradigm and parallel jobs execution of the workflow management system. Moving from the development to the production environment an efficient resource monitoring system has been implemented to easily analyse and debug sources of failure due to workflows computations. The results of the resource monitoring system are exploitable not only for IT experts administrators and workflow developers but also for the final users of the gateway. The affiliation to the STARnet Gateway Federation ensures the sustainability of the presented products after the end of the project, allowing the usage of VIALACTEA Science Gateway to all the stakeholders and not only to the community members.

Modern Astrophysics is based on multi-wavelength data organized into large and heterogeneous catalogues. Hence, the need for efficient, reliable and scalable catalogue cross-matching methods plays a crucial role in the era of the petabyte scale. Furthermore, multi-band data have often very different angular resolution, requiring the highest generality of cross-matching features, mainly in terms of region shape and resolution. In this work we present $C^{3}$ (Command-line Catalogue Cross-match), a multi-platform application designed to efficiently cross-match massive catalogues. It is based on a multi-core parallel processing paradigm and conceived to be executed as a stand-alone command-line process or integrated within any generic data reduction/analysis pipeline, providing the maximum flexibility to the end-user, in terms of portability, parameter configuration, catalogue formats, angular resolution, region shapes, coordinate units and cross-matching types. Using real data, extracted from public surveys, we discuss the cross-matching capabilities and computing time efficiency also through a direct comparison with some publicly available tools, chosen among the most used within the community, and representative of different interface paradigms. We verified that the $C^{3}$ tool has excellent capabilities to perform an efficient and reliable cross-matching between large datasets. Although the elliptical cross-match and the parametric handling of angular orientation and offset are known concepts in the astrophysical context, their availability in the presented command-line tool makes $C^{3}$ competitive in the context of public astronomical tools., Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, Accepted for publication on PASP

The VIALACTEA project has a work package dedicated to Tools and Infrastructure and, inside it, a task for the Database and Virtual Observatory Infrastructure. This task aims at providing an infrastructure to store all the resources needed by the, more purposely, scientific work packages of the project itself. This infrastructure includes a combination of: storage facilities, relational databases and web services on top of them, and has taken, as a whole, the name of VIALACTEA Knowledge Base (VLKB). This contribution illustrates the current status of this VLKB. It details the set of data resources put together; describes the database that allows data discovery through VO inspired metadata maintenance; illustrates the discovery, cutout and access services built on top of the former two for the users to exploit the data content., Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2016, Software and Cyberifrastructure for Astronomy IV, Conference Proceedings

We use the Herschel Hi-GAL survey data to study the spatial distribution in Galactic longitude and latitude of the interstellar medium and of dense, star-forming clumps in the inner Galaxy. The peak position and width of the latitude distribution of the dust column density as well as of number density of compact sources from the band-merged Hi-GAL photometric catalogues are analysed as a function of longitude. The width of the diffuse dust column density traced by the Hi-GAL 500 micron emission varies across the inner Galaxy, with a mean value of 1{\deg}.2-1{\deg}.3, similar to that of the 250um Hi-GAL sources. 70um Hi-GAL sources define a much thinner disk, with a mean FWHM of 0{\deg}.75, and an average latitude of b=0{\deg}.06, coincident with the results from ATLASGAL. The GLAT distribution as a function of GLON shows modulations, both for the diffuse emission and for the compact sources, with ~0{\deg}.2 displacements mostly toward negative latitudes at l~ +40{\deg}, +12{\deg}, -25{\deg} and -40{\deg}. No such modulations can be found in the MIPSGAL 24 or WISE 22 um data when the entire source samples are considered. The distortions revealed by Herschel are interpreted as large-scale bending modes of the Plane. The lack of similar distortions in tracers of more evolved YSOs or stars rules out gravitational instabilities or satellite-induced perturbations, as they should act on both the diffuse and stellar disk components. We propose that the observed bends are caused by incoming flows of extra-planar gas interacting with the gaseous disk. Stars decouple from the gaseous ISM and relax into the stellar disk potential. The time required for the disappearance of the distortions from the diffuse ISM to the relatively evolved YSO stages are compatible with star-formation timescales., Comment: Astronomy & Astrophysics, accepted. 13 pages, 9 figures

We discuss the potential of high sensitivity mid-IR and far-IR spectroscopy to derive the physical properties of active nuclei and starburst regions of local and distant galaxies. For local galaxies, it will be possible to map the discs and the interstellar medium through the low ionization ionic lines and a variety of molecular tracers, such as OH, H 2 O and high-J CO. At increasing distance, most of the ionic nebular lines (typical of stars and active galactic nuclei) are shifted into the far-IR, making possible to compare the spectra observed in high redshift galaxies with those predicted by different evolutionary scenarios. At the very high redshift of 10–15, sensitive mid-to-far-IR spectrometers, such as those planned to be at the focal plane of the future SPICA mission, could be adequate to detect the H recombination lines excited in the HII regions around population III stars, if these stars happened to reside in large clusters of more than 10 5 members.

Euclid is a space mission dedicated to the high-precision study of dark energy and dark matter. Its visible instrument (VIS) will acquire wide field images by means of an array of 36 CCD focal plane detectors. Considering that each acquired full frame produces a huge amount of data (~1.2GByte), an overall daily production of ~120 GByte is expected, which must be compressed to fit the 520 Gbit VIS daily telemetry. Due to the highly demanding science requirements such compression must be rigorously lossless. This software requirement is very hard to meet because of the following constraints: i) the average Compression Ratio (CR) must be greater than 2.8; ii) the activities of data compression inside the Control Data Processing Unit and transmission towards the satellite shall complete in less than 369s, that fits to the acquisition time of the near-infrared instrument; and iii) the compressors parameters as well as the transmission packet size must be tuned to ensure minimal data loss in case of transmission errors. The results obtained with 1D and 2D compression algorithms based on the CCSDS 121 and CCSDS 122 recommended standards, fed with improved focal plane simulations, have been compared to each other. Moreover, a set of various reordering and pre-processing procedures has been applied to the read-out data stream, considering different sizes of the input data segments. The overall scope of these comparative works has been not only to maximize the compression ratio and to minimize the compression time, but also to provide a trade-off between the input data size and the minimum output compressed data segment in order to minimize the data loss due to transmission errors propagation. From our test we found that performing a full (at CCD level) reordering of the read-out data-stream leads to a better compression ratio with both algorithms. The CCSDS 121, however, gives the best results in terms of CR. Finally we found that, for the considered simulated images, the standard pre-processing activities like bias subtraction, bitshift and windowing do not affect the CR significantly. Analogously an additional analysis of the effect of the expected source crowding showed that it is also not important.

SAFARI (SpicA FAR infrared Instrument) is a far-infrared imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer for the SPICA mission. The Digital Processing Unit (DPU) of the instrument implements the functions of controlling the overall instrument and implementing the science data compression and packing. The DPU design is based on the use of a LEON family processor. In SAFARI, all instrument components are connected to the central DPU via SpaceWire links. On these links science data, housekeeping and commands flows are in some cases multiplexed, therefore the interface control shall be able to cope with variable throughput needs. The effective data transfer workload can be an issue for the overall system performances and becomes a critical parameter for the on-board software design, both at application layer level and at lower, and more HW related, levels. To analyze the system behavior in presence of the expected SAFARI demanding science data flow, we carried out a series of performance tests using the standard GR-CPCI-UT699 LEON3-FT Development Board, provided by Aeroflex/Gaisler, connected to the emulator of the SAFARI science data links, in a point-to-point topology. Two different communication protocols have been used in the tests, the ECSS-E-ST-50-52C RMAP protocol and an internally defined one, the SAFARI internal data handling protocol. An incremental approach has been adopted to measure the system performances at different levels of the communication protocol complexity. In all cases the performance has been evaluated by measuring the CPU workload and the bus latencies. The tests have been executed initially in a custom low level execution environment and finally using the Real- Time Executive for Multiprocessor Systems (RTEMS), which has been selected as the operating system to be used onboard SAFARI. The preliminary results of the carried out performance analysis confirmed the possibility of using a LEON3 CPU processor in the SAFARI DPU, but pointed out, in agreement with previous similar studies, the need of carefully designing the overall architecture to implement some of the DPU functionalities on additional processing devices.

The Japanese SPace Infrared telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics, SPICA, aims to provide astronomers with a truly new window on the universe. With a large -3 meter class- cold -6K- telescope, the mission provides a unique low background environment optimally suited for highly sensitive instruments limited only by the cosmic background itself. SAFARI, the SpicA FAR infrared Instrument SAFARI, is a Fourier Transform imaging spectrometer designed to fully exploit this extremely low far infrared background environment. The SAFARI consortium, comprised of European and Canadian institutes, has established an instrument reference design based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer stage with outputs directed to three extremely sensitive Transition Edge Sensor arrays covering the 35 to 210 μm domain. The baseline instrument provides R > 1000 spectroscopic imaging capabilities over a 2’ by 2’ field of view. A number of modifications to the instrument to extend its capabilities are under investigation. With the reference design SAFARI’s sensitivity for many objects is limited not only by the detector NEP but also by the level of broad band background radiation – the zodiacal light for the shorter wavelengths and satellite baffle structures for the longer wavelengths. Options to reduce this background are dedicated masks or dispersive elements which can be inserted in the optics as required. The resulting increase in sensitivity can directly enhance the prime science goals of SAFARI; with the expected enhanced sensitivity astronomers would be in a better position to study thousands of galaxies out to redshift 3 and even many hundreds out to redshifts of 5 or 6. Possibilities to increase the wavelength resolution, at least for the shorter wavelength bands, are investigated as this would significantly enhance SAFARI’s capabilities to study star and planet formation in our own galaxy. © (2014) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Modern space missions are becoming increasingly complex: the interconnection of the units in a satellite is now a network of terminals linked together through routers, where devices with different level of automation and intelligence share the same data-network. The traceability of the network transactions is performed mostly at terminal level through log analysis and hence it is difficult to verify in real time the reliability of the interconnections and the interchange protocols. To improve and ease the traffic analysis in a SpaceWire network we implemented a low-level link analyzer, with the specific goal to simplify the integration and test phases in the development of space instrumentation. The traffic analyzer collects signals coming from pod probes connected in-series on the interested links between two SpaceWire terminals. With respect to the standard traffic analyzers, the design of this new tool includes the possibility to internally reshape the LVDS signal. This improvement increases the robustness of the analyzer towards environmental noise effects and guarantees a deterministic delay on all analyzed signals. The analyzer core is implemented on a Xilinx FPGA, programmed to decode the bidirectional LVDS signals at Link and Network level. Successively, the core packetizes protocol characters in homogeneous sets of time ordered events. The analyzer provides time-tagging functionality for each characters set, with a precision down to the FPGA Clock, i.e. about 20nsec in the adopted HW environment. The use of a common time reference for each character stream allows synchronous performance measurements. The collected information is then routed to an external computer for quick analysis: this is done via high-speed USB2 connection. With this analyzer it is possible to verify the link performances in terms of induced delays in the transmitted signals. A case study focused on the analysis of the Time-Code synchronization in presence of a SpaceWire Router is shown in this paper as well.

PACS is one of the three instruments of the ESA space mission Herschel. Its warm electronics consists of 4 computers connected through 1355 links. Each computer is equipped with a DSP-21020 microprocessor, each running its own software. In this poster we describe the main features of the dierent software with some emphasis on the FDIR (Failure Detection Isolation and Recovery) procedures implemented on-board: we describe the FDIR design and we show how the few anomalies that occurred since the Herschel launch three years ago, have been succesfully handled autonomously by the instrument.

The Command and Data Processing Unit (CDPU) of the Euclid Visible Imager is one of the two warm electronics units of the instrument. It implements on one side the digital interface to the satellite, for telecommands acquisition and telemetry downloading, and on the other side the interface to the focal plane CCDs readout electronics, for science data acquisition and compression. The CDPU main functionalities include the instrument commanding, control and health monitoring. The baseline unit architecture is presented, reporting the results of the phase B1 study and of the trade-off activity carried out to check the performances of the SW implementation of two different lossless compression algorithms on the baseline target processor (LEON3-FT) and on a HW compressor.

The Herschel SPIRE On-Board Software (OBS) is presented. This real time operational software controls the scientific data transmission and keeps a control layer between the SPIRE Mission Timeline (MTL) and the real instruments status. It embeds a multithreaded engine that interprets control procedures for the detector and mechanism subsystems. An autonomous monitoring agent keeps control of subsystems status, and takes local decisions based on pre-loaded reaction maps. The behaviour of low level system functions is configurable remotely via the reactions maps and control procedures.

The Local Oscillator Subsystem (LOS/S) is a part of the HIFI (Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared) project, an infrared heterodyne instrument for astronomical observations on the ESA HERSCHEL Space Observatory. Local Oscillator Subsystem uses the set of sensitive microwave components, essential for frequency multiplication from K/Ka Bands to 480/1910GHz. The paper presents the methods of biasing of the LOU independent microwave amplifiers and diodes. The special care at the design phase was given to different methods of protection against wrong biasing of such components. The results of the protection, implemented in LCU hardware and software, are discussed at the paper, based on the lessons learned from more than four years of pre-launch activities and almost three years of HIFI operations on the orbit.

Outflows generated by protostars heavily affect the kinematics and chemistry of the hosting molecular cloud through strong shocks that enhance the abundance of some molecules. L1157 is the prototype of chemically active outflows, and a strong shock, called B1, is taking place in its blue lobe between the precessing jet and the hosting cloud. We present the Herschel-PACS 55--210 micron spectra of the L1157-B1 shock, showing emission lines from CO, H2O, OH, and [OI]. The spatial resolution of the PACS spectrometer allows us to map the warm gas traced by far-infrared (FIR) lines with unprecedented detail. The rotational diagram of the high-Jup CO lines indicates high-excitation conditions (Tex ~ 210 +/- 10 K). We used a radiative transfer code to model the hot CO gas emission observed with PACS and in the CO (13-12) and (10-9) lines measured by Herschel-HIFI. We derive 20010^5 cm-3. The CO emission comes from a region of about 7 arcsec located at the rear of the bow shock where the [OI] and OH emission also originate. Comparison with shock models shows that the bright [OI] and OH emissions trace a dissociative J-type shock, which is also supported by a previous detection of [FeII] at the same position. The inferred mass-flux is consistent with the "reverse" shock where the jet is impacting on the L1157-B1 bow shock. The same shock may contribute significantly to the high-Jup CO emission., Comment: 7 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics

We present the preliminary design of the Instrument Control Unit (ICU) of the SpicA FAR infrared Instrument (SAFARI), an imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) designed to give continuous wavelength coverage in both photometric and spectroscopic modes from around 34 to 210 µm. Due to the stringent requirements in terms of mass and volume, the overall SAFARI warm electronics will be composed by only two main units: Detector Control Unit and ICU. ICU is therefore a macro-unit incorporating the four digital sub-units dedicated to the control of the overall instrument functionalities: the Cooler Control Unit, the Mechanism Control Unit, the Digital processing Unit and the Power Supply Unit. Both the mechanical solution adopted to host the four sub-units and the internal electrical architecture are presented as well as the adopted redundancy approach.

The Euclid Imaging Channels Instrument of the Euclid mission is designed to study the weak gravitational lensing cosmological probe. The combined Visible and Near Infrared imaging channels will be controlled by a common data handling unit (PDHU), implementing onboard the instrument digital interfaces to the satellite. The PDHU main functionalities include the scientific data acquisition and compression, the instrument commanding and control and the instrument health monitoring. Given the high data rate and the compression needs, an innovative architecture, based on the use of several computing and interface modules, considered as building blocks of a modular design will be presented.

The Digital Processing Unit (DPU) of the SAFARI instrument on board the SPICA satellite will be the bridge between the Spacecraft Command and Data Management System and the other instrument subsystems. The DPU will implement Telemetry and Telecommand exchange with the spacecraft, commanding and control of the subsystems, instrument health monitoring, scientific data acquisition, compression and formatting. The DPU design has been driven by the requirements for processing power, memory resources and data rates, as well as mass and power budgets. It will be based on a LEON2-FT processor. All the data interfaces will be implemented using the SpaceWire standard protocols. In this paper we provide the present status of the DPU design and describe a prototype board developed to study the performance of the adopted solutions. The prototype board is based on an FPGA where the main DPU processor - a LEON System on Chip - can be implemented. The breadboard provides the memory, connectivity and expandability resources that make it a suitable platform for exploring and evaluating a wide range of HW/SW configurations, as required during the early design phases of the SAFARI DPU. The main characteristics of the proposed processor and of the performed tests are described as well.

The NIP is a near infrared imaging photometer that is currently under investigation for the Euclid space mission in context of ESA's 2015 Cosmic Vision program. Together with the visible camera (VIS) it will form the basis of the weak lensing measurements for Euclid. The NIP channel will perform photometric imaging in 3 near infrared bands (Y, J, H) covering a wavelength range from ~ 0.9 to 2 μm over a field of view (FoV) of ~ 0.5 deg 2 . With the required limiting point source magnitude of 24 mAB (5 sigma) the NIP channel will be used to determine the photometric redshifts of over 2 billion galaxies collected over a wide survey area of 20 000 deg 2 . In addition to the photometric measurements, the NIP channel will deliver unique near infrared (NIR) imaging data over the entire extragalactic sky, enabling a wide variety of ancillary astrophysical and cosmological studies. In this paper we will present the results of the study carried out by the Euclid Imaging Consortium (EIC) during the Euclid assessment phase.

The prototype for a general purpose FPGA based control system for space instrumentation is presented, with particular attention to the instrument control application software. The system HW is based on th e LEON3FT processor, which gives the flexibility to configure the chip with only the necessary HW functionalities, from simple logic up to small dedicated processors. The instrument control SW is developed in ANSI C and for time critical (< 10µs) commanding sequences implements an internal instructions sequencer, trig gered via an interrupt service routine based on a HW high priority interrupt. Keywords: instrument control, FPGA, Real Time Applications, Sequencer. 1. INTRODUCTION FPGAs are presently the most suitable devi ces to meet the requiremen ts that characterize the in strument control systems onboard space instrumentation: small size and weight, very low power consumption, radiation tolerance and high reliability. They combine several system functions on a single chip, including microprocessor functionality and small size memory. In particular, in the recent years, the possibility to use FPGAs has given the opportunity to develop fault tolerant processors, usually not available as commercial Hi Rel components. These processors are the result of a great effort of the Space Agencies [1 ] [2] [3] in suppor ting the research and development ac tivities in this challenging area. The fault-tolerant LEON processor system [4] has been developed within this framework. It includes functionality to detect and correct single-event upset (SEU) errors in all on-chip RAM memories and can be used in the harsh space environment. The LEON architecture is based on the SPARC v8 architecture. This processor will be used in several space missions (i.e. the Taiwanese ARGO, the Swedish PRISMA mission, the European Space Agency GAIA and BepiColombo) and it is planned to be used also in a number of medium size missions competing in the frame of the ESA Cosmic Vision program. Several general purpose HW systems have been proposed in recent times [5][6] based on the use of the LEON FT processor on top of different target devices, i.e. Atmel AT607E for Leon2 systems, and ACTEL RTAX FPGA technology for LEON3 systems. In these single board devices the CPU is integrated with several different interfaces (SpaceWire, CAN bus, MIL-STD-1553), to exploit a multipurpo se networking capability, able to meet the requirements coming from different mission scenarios. The aim of this work is to develop a prototype of a generic Instrument Control System to be used in the payload instruments onboard future scientific missions (e.g. the study of the SAFARI Instrument onboard the JAXA-ESA SPICA Mission [7]). We decided therefore to adopt a FPGA-based approach, using the LEON processor as the main system CPU. The generic processor IP core has been customized to include the components reported in Figure 1. A set of baseline functionalities has been defined to be implemented by the prototype, including the possibility to handle, in addition to standard external interfaces, also a SpaceWire link. The work has been focused on the development of a generic Instrument Control Application Software and, in particular, on the need to include in the Control System hard real time capabilities coupled with the possibility to easily reprogram from ground the onboard control procedures. Indeed, standard Operating Systems (OS) and application SoftWares (SW) already available for the selected environment, even when they meet the necessary timing requirements (Real time OS), hardly allow a dynamic programmability of the activities onboard.

The Japanese led Space Infrared telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (SPICA) will observe the universe over the 5 to 210 micron band with unprecedented sensitivity owing to its cold (~5 K) 3.5m telescope. The scientific case for a European involvement in the SPICA mission has been accepted by the ESA advisory structure and a European contribution to SPICA is undergoing an assessment study as a Mission of Opportunity within the ESA Cosmic Vision 1015-2015 science mission programme. In this paper we describe the elements that are being studied for provision by Europe for the SPICA mission. These entail ESA directly providing the cryogenic telescope and ground segment support and a consortium of European insitutes providing a Far Infrared focal plane instrument. In this paper we describe the status of the ESA study and the design status of the FIR focal plane instrument.

High-energy phenomena in the cosmos, and in particular processes leading to the emission of gamma- rays in the energy range 10 MeV - 100 GeV, play a very special role in the understanding of our Universe. This energy range is indeed associated with non-thermal phenomena and challenging particle acceleration processes. The technology involved in detecting gamma-rays is challenging and drives our ability to develop improved instruments for a large variety of applications. GAMMA-LIGHT is a Small Mission which aims at an unprecedented advance of our knowledge in many sectors of astrophysical and Earth studies research. The Mission will open a new observational window in the low-energy gamma-ray range 10-50 MeV, and is configured to make substantial advances compared with the previous and current gamma-ray experiments (AGILE and Fermi). The improvement is based on an exquisite angular resolution achieved by GAMMA-LIGHT using state-of-the-art Silicon technology with innovative data acquisition. GAMMA-LIGHT will address all astrophysics issues left open by the current generation of instruments. In particular, the breakthrough angular resolution in the energy range 100 MeV - 1 GeV is crucial to resolve patchy and complex features of diffuse sources in the Galaxy as well as increasing the point source sensitivity. This proposal addresses scientific topics of great interest to the community, with particular emphasis on multifrequency correlation studies involving radio, optical, IR, X-ray, soft gamma-ray and TeV emission. At the end of this decade several new observatories will be operational including LOFAR, SKA, ALMA, HAWK, CTA. GAMMA-LIGHT will "fill the vacuum" in the 10 MeV-10 GeV band, and will provide invaluable data for the understanding of cosmic and terrestrial high-energy sources., Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures