Radiation hardness of a space monitoring instrument

Compact and simple space environment monitors are of increasing interest for new space missions, which employ commercial off-the-shelf components. Especially electronic devices are not certified for the space environment or radiation induced effects. The knowledge of the satellite exposure, in combination with testing results enables a prediction of the satellite performance as well as an adaption of the operation. For this reason, a compact magnetometer instrument has been developed, to monitor the environment and enable scientific multi-point measurements. It employs commercial off-the-shelf components and is compatible with the CubeSat standard. The instrument operates a primary anisotropic magneto resistance sensor with space heritage and a new generation of highly integrated secondary sensors. The latter provide differential measurements to characterize the artificial satellite magnetic field at different positions along a printed circuit board boom structure. After demonstrating the total ionizing dose radiation tolerance of the secondary sensors with gamma photons, single event effect radiation tests were done with protons. The results indicate a sensitivity of the output signal on the proton intensity. For this reason, a floating gate dosimeter as well as different static random-access memory storage devices were evaluated as radiation monitors.