Rad-hard properties of the optical glass adopted for the PLATO space telescope refractive components

PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) is a medium sized mission (M3) selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) for launch in 2026. The PLATO payload includes 26 telescopes all based on a six-element refractive optical scheme. Some components will be eventually manufactured by S-FPL51, N-KZFS11 and S-FTM16 glass whose radiation resistance is partially or totally unknown. The radiation-resistance properties of such materials have been investigated by using a 60Co γ-rays source as probe. Each optical component has been characterized by a depth profile curve which describes the transmission loss as a function of the thickness in dependence of the impinging dose. A model to simulate the throughput of the whole instrument has been developed and used to verify the instrument performance considering different stellar spectra.