Radiation Hardened Approach to Ultra-Low SWaP 2D Imaging Spectrometry

Technical staff at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Intelligence and Space Research Division have developed a system that supports high resolution 2D imaging spectrometry applications and operates at rates up to 100 kHz event rate in the stressing space environments of geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). Specifically, spacecraft systems operating through GTO will traverse the Earth’s radiation belts twice per day and be subjected to the highly dynamic and energetic trapped charged particle populations. In addition to discussing the strategies for designing this instrument to meet radiation hardness requirements, we will discuss the approach to designing a low size, weight, and power (SWaP) 2D imager through an innovative approach to interfacing a micro-channel plate (MCP) and cross delay line (XDL) anode. Enabling CubeSat class satellites to implement spectrometry is valuable to the scientific community, presenting a need for designing ultra-low SWaP instruments for these applications that possess limited resources and budget. In this paper, we will provide a detailed overview of the various aspects of our 2D imaging system, design decisions, challenges, and discuss potential applications to other space-flight spectrometry missions. This design is scheduled to fly on the Experiment for Space Radiation Analysis (ESRA) CubeSat mission to GTO and the Autonomous Ion Mass Spectrometer Sentry (AIMSS) to the International Space Station.