RADHARD 2018

Radiation Hardness Assurance

Strategies of using COTS at ESA’s CubeSat Project RADCUBE with the RadMag Instrument

Attila Hirn, András Gerecs, Balázs Zábori
Centre for Energy Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary

Abstract

In cooperation with Imperial College London, the Polish space company Astronika and the Hungarian small satellite developer C3S LLC, the Centre for Energy Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences is developing a compact instrument, called RadMag, capable of providing scientific data on space radiation (proton and electron spectra, flux of heavier ions) and the status of the magnetosphere and fitting into approximately 1.2U following CubeSat standards. An ESA experiment comprising two radiation assurance boards is also included in the payload design. The first in-orbit demonstration of the instrument, in the frame of the ESA GSTP 6.3 RADCUBE programme, will be performed within a 3U CubeSat mission, called RADCUBE. The launch of the satellite is planned in late 2019.

In our presentation, the main objectives of the development, a brief description of the instrument and the present status of the development will be given. Limitations originating from the nature of the CubeSat IOD mission as well as our methods on EEE COTS components selection will be presented.

References

Zábori, B., Hirn, A., Deme, S., Pázmándi, T., Horváth, Gy., Várhegyi, Zs., Apáthy, I., Space weather research and forecast services using CubeSats, 4S Small Satellites, Systems & Services 2016 Symposium Proceeding, ID: CS01_6_175_Zabori, 2016.

Acknowledgments

The above activity is carried out under a programme of, and funded by, the European Space Agency (contract numbers: 4000117620/16/NL/LF/as and 4000120860/17/NL/GLC/as). The authors would like to thank Tomasz Szewczyk (ESA/ESTEC) for the discussion and his valuable help in component selection for the RadMag instrument.