CubeSat Mission SOCRAT for the Monitoring of Natural Radiation Environment and its Impact on Electronics at Sun Synchronous LEO

SINP-MSU, FNSPE, NPI, FMP, and ESC has participated in the 3U CubeSat mission named SOCRAT. The SOCRAT satellite will be released at the solar-synchronous orbit at altitude 530 km. The main goal of this mission – to study the complex of natural radiation environment mainly consisted of trapped radiation, galactic cosmic rays and solar energetic particles. These components of radiation have a different spatial, energy, composition and temporal characteristics and can impact with on- board electronics with different ways, but synergy of radiation effects cannot be excluded.

For the purpose of the mission, we equip SOCRAT by:

1/ Semiconductor Dosimetry Block (SDB) which will consist of:

• Two-layer proton telescope based on the new generation of monolithic pixel detector X-CHIP-03,
• A SpacePix1 chip with a logarithmic amplifier for high-LET particle energy deposition measurement,
• SPACEDOS 01 – a pin diode detector for integral dose measurement,
• PP – a new type of high voltage source with a plasma instrument.

This instruments are responsible for radiation environment monitoring.

2/ High- voltage electronic device with a possibilities of voltage change (test -plate for the future plasma instrument).

These instruments will provide information both radiation environment and radiation impact on electronic systems during the flight.

Interface for connection to the CubeSat onboard systems, and other instrumentation are used for the fulfillment of the mission task.

All above mentioned instruments have been successfully tested in MSU. SOCRAT satellite was installed on board the launcher. This satellite is ready to launch this July,2019 from ”Vostochny” spaceport.