Radiometric modelling of a space optical instrument: an example of application to PHEBUS

Abstract : Probing of Hermean Exosphere By Ultraviolet Spectroscopy (PHEBUS) is a dual channels spectrometer working in the Extreme UltraViolet (EUV) and Far UltraViolet (FUV) range. It will be on board of ESA BepiColombo cornerstone mission and it will be devoted to investigate the composition, the dynamic, the formation and the feeding mechanisms of Mercury’s exosphere system. A consistent interpretation of the observational data collected by PHEBUS requires a deeply knowledge of its radiometric behavior. The Mueller’s Matrix formalism can be adopted to derive an accurate radiometric model able to takes into account also the polarization state of the source observed by PHEBUS. Moreover, this theoretical model can be further verified and refined during an experimental ground calibration campaign. In this work we present the radiometric model derived for PHEBUS spectrometer together with some results obtained during the Flight Model (FM) ground calibration which is still ongoing. In particular, the results obtained employing this approach show that this is a complete and versatile method to perform the radiometric calibration of a generic space instrument.