Thermopile Detector Radiation Hardened Readout, Phase I

The Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM) will provide a better understanding as to how gas giant planets and their satellites form and evolve. The Jupiter Europa Orbiter (JEO) is the NASA element of the EJSM. JEO will be built to withstand the intense radiation in Europa orbit and the JEO payload includes a thermal instrument. The thermal instrument is based on thermopile detectors that are intrinsically radiation hard to at least 10 Mrad; however, the thermopile readout ASIC needs to be hardened to tolerate the radiation sources of the JEO mission. Black Forest Engineering proposes on Phase I to modify existing thermopile readout circuitry using radiation hardened by design techniques (RHBD) to tolerate the JEO mission radiation sources. The readout application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) when developed on Phase II and combined with JPL thermopiles will meet the thermal instrument requirements of the JEO. More »