Small-Scale Instrumentation for Space Borne Radiation Detection and Imaging

Operational space weather now- and forecasting requires a large set of near-real-time data points. Today only few science-grade instruments monitor energetic particles in space. In the future it is desired to provide a distributed network of space weather sensors. With the advent of nanosatellites and miniaturised instrumentation this aim can be reached. Space weather affects both ground and satellite infrastructure. Hence it is vital to have now- and forecasting capabilities alike tropospheric weather forecast provides today. This project uses a novel integrated circuit to study and develop a new instrument for energetic particle detection. Under the on-going project the integrated circuit is studied and characterised in detail, and it is integrated with the system to meet the requirements for the arctic satellite broadband mission (ASBM) communication satellites. Finally, a space radiation monitor prototype is constructed that allows to verify particle transport simulations and demonstrate the capabilities. The instrument's applications include space weather monitoring, dosimetry as well as atmospheric and particle physics.

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Small and nanosatellites are an emerging sector in space industry. Such satellite platforms require miniature instrumentation with small form factor, low-mass, low-cost, low power consumption and rapid development cycles. Today's consumer electronics are based on highly integrated electrical circuits and state-of-the-art technology. These standards are not used for space missions at present due to missing experience and inherent issues in a space environment such as radiation effects. This project will use a novel hybrid approach to develop a new instrument for radiation detection and imaging. Custom radiation-hard microelectronics will be combined with commercial off the shelf products to allow for a compact, low-cost and low-power instrument solution which can be used on small and nanosatellites. The integrated circuits are developed, tested and provided by the industrial project partner (IDEAS). For this project already two prototype integrated circuits are available: The first a radiation detector front-end readout and the second is a general purpose data acquisition integrated circuit. A combination of both devices is planned to be used in order to create a multipurpose instrument for a wide range of applications. The university partner (UiO) has experience with the development of nanosatellite sub-systems, for example, the student-based CubeSat project CubeStar. The PhD Candidate has lead the CPT-SCOPE project, which developed a compact radiation monitoring device for a stratospheric balloon mission in 2015. This has been part of the applicant's master thesis.