PAGE CONTENTS
Objectives
Future Telecom missions will encounter a severe radiation environment, including the heart of the Earth’s trapped electron radiation belts and the Solar Particle Events (SPE).
Additionally, the micrometeoroid environment is also of concern for future Telecom missions. The desire for microelectronics that are miniaturised, low power, and high speed, drives technology designa that are increasingly sensitive to radiation effects.
Radiation effects that are important to consider for instrument and spacecraft design fall roughly into four categories:
- Degradation from total ionising dose (TID),
- Degradation from non-ionising energy loss (NIEL),
- Single event effects (SEEs), and
- Spacecraft charging/ discharging.
Each effect requires a different environment definition depending on the physics of the effect and the interaction model used to predict the rate of occurrence.
In the proposed experiment, TID, NIEL and SEE effects are studied by employing several technology experiments in conjunction with radiation monitoring instruments, selected to provide optimised coverage of the region of the radiation environment most important for the effects being studied.
Challenges
The AEEF is developed in order to have negligible impact on the main Alphasat mission. Presently power consumption, mass, TM/TC requirements, and the architecture are critically studied to achieve this objective.
Plan
The project is currently in phase A to study the feasibility of implementation of the AEEF on the Alphasat. This activity will be concluded at the end of July 2006.
Current Status
This activity was initiated at the end of January 2006. Currently the detailed requirements for the AEEF are being generated.