Laboratory of Infrared Astrophysics, ISAS, Yoshinodai Sagamihara, Kanagawa, Japan
IRIS is a second generation infrared space mission of ISAS. It is a 70 cm liwuid helium cooled telescope mainly dedicated to a survey observations in near, mid- and far infrared regions. It is equipped with near and mid- infrared cameras(IRC) with large format InSb (512x512) and SiAs (256x256) array detectors and far infrared scanners (FIS) with Ge:Ga stressed (5x15) and non-stressed (5x20) detector arrays. The formers will make deep surveys for limited area of the sky by pointing observations and the latter will make a full sky survey by scanning with orbital motion. The sensitivities would range 103 to 104 times better for the formers and 100 times for the latters than the IRAS. They will give extremely useful information on studies of birth and evolution of the galaxies as well as brown dwarfs and proto-planetary objects. The satellite will be launched into a sun-synchronous orbit in 2003 by ISAS rocket M-V and the observation will be made for about 400 days.
The instrumentation, their observational capabilities and observational plan will be briefly reviewed.