S. Blasko

Radiation damage of electronic components to be used in a space experiment

Abstract Commercial off-the-shelf components can be succesfully used in scientific payloads installed in spacecraft flying on Low Earth Orbits (LEO). Several experiments (AMS01, NINA) have already used these components, some others are planning to use them (AMS02, PAMELA and GLAST). In order to establish the reliability of these components careful tests need to be performed according to space qualification rules. There are two main types of possible damage that needs to be tested: the total dose damage and the single event effects (SEE). In this paper we will describe the physical cause of both the effects, explain how to conduct a test according to ESA/SSC standard rules and give some examples of components that have been tested by the AMS collaboration.

Total and Partial Fragmentation Cross-Section of 500 MeV/nucleon Carbon Ions on Different Target Materials

By using an experimental setup based on thin and thick double-sided microstrip silicon detectors, it has been possible to identify the fragmentation products due to the interaction of very high energy primary ions on different targets. Here we report total and partial cross-sections measured at GSI (Gesellschaft fur Schwerionenforschung), Darmstadt, for 500 MeV/n energy 12C beam incident on water (in flasks), polyethylene, lucite, silicon carbide, graphite, aluminium, copper, iron, tin, tantalum and lead targets. The results are compared to the predictions of GEANT4 (v4.9.4) and FLUKA (v11.2) Monte Carlo simulation programs.

A pulsed nanosecond IR laser diode system to automatically test the Single Event Effects in the laboratory

A pulsed nanosecond IR laser diode system to automatically test the Single Event Effects in laboratory is described. The results of Single Event Latchup (SEL) test on two VLSI chips (VA HDR64, 0.8 and 1:2 mm technology) are discussed and compared to those obtained with high-energy heavy ions at GSI (Darmstadt). r 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

First data from the EGLE experiment onboard the ISS

EGLE is a wide frequency band search- coil magnetometer designed and built at the Roma Tre University. It has been installed onboard the ISS by the Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori on April 25, 2005 within the LAZIO- EGLE experiment carried out during the ENEIDE Soyuz mission. The scope of the experiment is to test EGLE in space and to investigate geomagnetic field variations. The main applications of EGLE are the study of electromagnetic environment inside the ISS, the correlation of magnetic field data with particle fluxes detected by LAZIO particle detector, and the monitoring of ionospheric perturbations possibly caused by Earth seismic activity. Since continuous electromagnetic field measurements on board the ISS are important for diverse space applications, a magnetometer with a suitable design is requested. Appropriate solutions for these applications, which have been adopted by EGLE, are in particular the use of 1- Wire technology and the possibility to detect by means of a search- coil magnetometer a large portion of the ULF frequency band, usually measured by flux- gate probes. To investigate the topside ionosphere electromagnetic environment and stability of Van Allen radiation belts in relation with seismic and anthropogenic electromagnetic emissions, a specific satellite mission (the ESPERIA project) has been designed for the Italian Space Agency (ASI), and up to now a few instruments of its payload have been built and tested in space. One of them is exactly the EGLE search- coil magnetometer. The first magnetic observations performed by this instrument reveal to be promising and demand for a further and deeper analysis based on a longer time series of data.

The Power Supply System of the AMS-02 Tracker Detector

This paper describes the architecture, the performance and the qualification tests of the tracker detector power supply system for the AMS-02 experiment. The AMS-02 experiment will measure the cosmic ray spectrum from 0.5 GeV up to several TeV in space, looking for anti-matter, dark matter and strange quark matter. The experimental apparatus will be installed in the International Space Station (ISS) in year 2008. A preliminary version of this experiment has flown in 1998 on the STS-91 shuttle flight. The power supply system of the tracker has been designed optimizing noise performances, modularity and efficiency. Power is generated starting from a 28 V line coming from the power distribution box for the entire experiment. This power is converted into the needed voltages by means of DC-DC converters, and for bias supply and front-end voltages is postregulated by means of linear regulators. Components off the shelf (COTS) have been extensively used in the construction of this power supply, however various radiation test campaigns have been performed in order to verify the reliability of these components. Active components were tested for total dose radiation damage and digital components were also tested for single event effects. The power supply architecture developed for the tracker detector has been used as a guideline for the development of the power supplies for the other detectors in the experiment.