Asteroid Framing Camera

AFC was designed specifically for NASA’s Dawn mission to the two largest bodies in the Asteroid belt, provided by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the DLR German Aerospace Center and Technical University of Braunschweig’s  Institute of Computer and Network Engineering. ESA's Hera asteroid mission will use a flight-spare of the AFC. The camera, equipped with seven spectral filters from the visible to the near-infrared, is able to gather spectral surface information as well as an eighth clear filter for navigation purposes and broadband surface science. The 5.5 kg AFC resembles a computer printer-sized box containing power and mass memory with a thermally insulated telescope extending out from it. Maximum image sensitivity is ensured by cooling the telescope’s CCD light detector down to -60 °C.