A RECONFIGURABLE ENERGETIC PARTICLE DETECTOR FOR PLANETARY EXPLORATION

We present a reconfigurable energetic particle instrument with a low energy threshold in order to study plasma populations in the thermal energy range. The instrument is intended to measure electrons from 10 keV to 1 MeV and ions from 10 keV to 10 MeV in various planetary environments. This instrument is based on a silicon detector with an ultra-thin entrance window. In front of the detector, a filter wheel allows to place either a thick foil, a pinhole or an obturator to allow the reconfiguration to various scientific modes to measure the combined spectra of electrons and ions, to measure the electron spectrum, to protect the detector from sunlight and to avoid saturation of the detector. The signal is processed by a reconfigurable Digital Pulse Processor implemented in a System on Chip which filters and shapes the pulses and creates energy spectra, allowing to optimize the tradeoff between energy resolution and maximum counting rate. The majority of the necessary building blocks are commercially available and some are even flight proven. The instrument fits in a 1U volume (10 cm x 10 cm x10 cm) and its power consumption is 2W. It is suitable to be flown on a 3U CubeSat or as a standalone instrument on a larger spacecraft.