In February 2017, the Satellite Servicing Projects Division (SSPD) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) began on-orbit operations of their newest technology demonstration experiment on the International Space Station (ISS). Launched on the SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services 10 (CRS-10) mission, the Raven experiment flew as a hosted payload on the Space Test Program's STP-H5 mission. Raven is a real-time autonomous relative navigation system that images visiting vehicles arriving to the ISS. Using multi-wavelength sensors and advanced on-board avionics, Raven measures range, bearing, and six-degree of freedom pose in order to produce an optimal relative state estimate of the observed vehicle. One of Raven's on-board sensors is a long-wave infrared camera which utilizes a Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Vanadium Oxide (VOx) based uncooled microbolometer. While performing on-orbit operations in July of 2017, Raven's infrared camera directly imaged the full disc of the Sun. In this paper, we will explore the damaging results of that solar exposure on the sensor, efforts to remedy the damage over time, and our root-cause theory on the mechanism of the microbolometer damage. Additionally, we will share our efforts towards mitigation techniques to prevent future solar damage to SSPD's next microbolometer based infrared camera, set to fly to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in 2021.
Sun Exposure Damage to a Microbolometer in LEO
2018
15 pages
Report
No indication
English
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