A beam line to simulate space environment at TANDAR ion accelerator

M.L. IBARRA; J. GARCIA; M. BARRERA; I. PRARIO; M. ALURRALDE

Simposio; 2nd International Academy of Astronautics Latin American Symposium on Small Satellites: Advanced Technologies and Distributed Systems; 2019

Environmental space is extremely hostile for satellites, due to high vacuum, temperature cycling, and the presence of energetically particles. This factors can affect the performance of electronic components, reducing their in orbit lifetime. The main effects of the radiation in modern electronic components are TID (Total Ionizing Dose) caused by electron and protons of the radiation belts as well, SEE (Single Event Effects) due to cosmic rays and heavy ions solar flares, and TNID (Total Non Ionizing Dose) which is cumulative effects as TID induced by proton from Van Allen belts and solar flames. With the aim of studied the behavior of materials and electronic devices under space environmental, a facility called EDRA (Ensayos de Daño por Radiación y Ambiente/Test of Radiation and Environmental Damage) was developed at the DES (Departamento Energía Solar/Solar Energy Department). The versatility of the irradiation facility allows us to performed qualification tests on devices, such as thermovacuum, thermocycling and radiation damage tests, at the 20MV Tandar Van der Graff accelerator. At the end of the beam line, a cylindrical vacuum chamber (68 cm inner diameter) was constructed in order to test several type of devices under space-like environmental conditions. Irradiation with different ion spectra can be performed to study the TID and TNID effects to guarantee a correct behavior of the devices under test in an ionising environment that emulates the radiation environment at space. The SEE can also be studied using a tantalum filter system to reduce the number of particle/cm2s. A 37 Farady Cups(FCs) array was developed to characterize and monitor high intensity beams allowing to perform multiple experiments with different particles, energies and current intensities. In cases of SEE experiments, very low intensity beams are used (below the FC sensitivity), for these studies silicon PIN photodiode detectors are employed, with conventional pulse counting electronic. Furthermore, the vacuum chamber has three flanges available for electrical connections, using DB25 and BNC connectors for in-situ measuring during experiments.The thermovacuum and thermocycled experiments can be performed with a stabilized temperature sample holder connected to a liquid-nitrogen feedthrough that allows us to generate arbitrary temperature ramps from -150ºC to 250ºC and vacuum level of 10-6 mbar are obtained with a turbomolecular pump.