The readout of scintillating fibers using Silicon APDs and Metal-Resistive-Semiconductor (MRS) devices was investigated in a large temperature range down to −150°C in the laboratory and at an electron beam. In comparison to conventional PMs with bialkali cathodes an improved efficiency was found for low light signals from blue and green scintillating fibers of 0.5 mm diameter.

In order to perform crystal growth experiments under microgravity it is necessary to measure the temperature of material samples with high accuracy. The very small signal amplitude and the difficult electromagnetic conditions in the melt furnace require an electronic system of outstanding performance. The limits of the attainable accuracy, noise immunity and on-line data access made necessary a new device concept. Based on first experiences on MIR’92, the electronic measurement system TEGRA (TEmperature and GRAvitation data) was developed and used successfully in the EUROMIR’95 and MIR’97 missions. It was designed to measure temperatures of up to 10 thermocouples (NiCr–NiAl or Pt–PtRh) with a resolution down to 2.5 mK. The concept includes differential thermometry and other applications whenever a high accuracy measurement of slowly drifting signals is required in an electromagnetically contaminated environment. Furthermore, a large microgravity database has been collected.

A multivariable end-point state weighted generalized predictive controller for the Bridgman crystal furnace TITUS is developed. A multivariable temperature prediction is done by a reduced dynamic representation using a matrix polynomial representation of the plant. The theoretical equivalence between the proposed multivariable control and Kalman filter state prediction is proven. It is shown, that the incorporation of the stochastic model improves the control performance