Slide 1 NASA Logo Engineering NASA LOGO EB Logo Martian Advanced Radiation Acquisition (MARA) Paul Delaune Slide 2 NASA Logo Engineering NASA LOGO EB Logo MARA Purpose Overview: • History – Radiation instruments at JSC involve the efforts by Dr. GautamBadhwar in the late 80’s to develop new radiation instruments. – Contracts to design instruments for the Shuttle and a Russian Mars mission to be launched in 1992. – A radiation instrument system was developed by Battelle Northwest Laboratories under Dr. Badhwar’s direction. • custom Battelle bus, • using an Intel 80188 CPU (PC XT type technology) • Software was developed using Turbo Pascal running on ROM DOS. • To keep costs down, as new instruments were bid by Dr. Badhwar, only small modifications were made to the existing designs. – Over the years, this resulted in technology erosion. – Station TEPC, IV/EVCPDS and the MARIE instrument are all designed using the same technology used in the late 80's. • Recent bids to produce new higher performance instruments with more advanced technology and high perceived risk. – The MARA project was started to proactively address the risk areas and thereby reducing the bid costs for new instruments. Slide 3 NASA Logo Engineering NASA LOGO EB Logo MARA Objectives • Advance the state of the art in radiation particle data acquisition. – Eliminate the short comings of the ISS/MARIE suite of radiation instruments. This will produce the largest gain in data collection at the lowest cost. • Radiation tolerant parts. • Data acquisition is deterministic. • Distributed rather than centralized data acquisition. Decision to take data or not is at the sensor level rather than the instrument level. • Near real time data display. – Design a radiation instrument using an industry standard bus system. • Allows several vendors to supply components. No proprietary interfaces. • Allows for upgrade of system components using commercially available sources. – Less expensive. – Quick turn around. – Commercial components are normally more mature designs which allow for good reliability and more available support. – Design a radiation instrument using a real time operating system with applications written in C or C++ • Improves the reaction time of the instrument • Allows multi-tasking. • Portable to state of the art compilers. – Eases upgrades and configuration management. – Design a radiation instrument using a modular data acquistion system. • Allows for simpler reconfiguration for different sensor needs. • Allows for quicker software reconfiguration. • Gives a common hardware and software interface. – Prove the design through testing. Slide 4 NASA Logo Engineering NASA LOGO EB Logo MARA Prototype with Silicon Detectors Mars Advanced Radiation Acquisition (MARA) Space Radiation Detection and Measurement for: CEV, Moon, Mars, Shuttle & Station Image of Phase I Prototype (shown in 2 detector configuration) with labels: Front Panel Future Spacecraft Interfaces, MARA Detector Interface Circuit, 'A' Type Detector in Housing, Ethernet, Single Board Computer, Power Supply Slide 5 NASA Logo Engineering NASA LOGO EB Logo MARA Software Components Control Console Purpose: Simulates GSE (Ground Support Equip) or Spacecraft Hardware: Dell Latitude D600 Laptop Software: Windows XP, Visual Basic 6.0 MARA Instrument Purpose: Data Acquisition from detector board Hardware: Tri-M Engineering TMZ-104, PC-104 Computer (Pentium) Software: Wind River VxWorks 5.5 (Real Time Operating System), C/C++ Application software Software Development Purpose: Develop instrument software. Debug & profile. Hardware: Dell Desktop Computer Software: Wind River Tornado 2.2 (Integrated Development Env) Slide 6 NASA Logo Engineering NASA LOGO EB Logo MARA At Brookhaven Test Parameters • This testing was conducted in cooperation with Johns Hopkins University’s APL and LBL at the NASA Space Radiation Lab (NSRL) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. • A beam of iron ions energized to 1000 MeV was aimed directly at the sensor stack and 30 degrees off center. Data Results • Pulse Height Spectrum shows the relative number of events at each energy level for each detector • XY-Scatter plot shows the relative energies deposited in each detector by the same particle • Timeline is used to characterize the particle rate. MARA Image with arrow of labels 'Beam – 1000 MeV Fe' and 'NSRL (NASA Space Radiation Lab)' pointing to image Slide 7 NASA Logo Engineering NASA LOGO EB Logo MARA Specs • 2 - 1 mm Silicon Detectors (MARIE heritage) • Maximum event rate – 1000 events/sec. • Maximum energy deposition measurement 500 MeV (can be reconfigured in hardware) • 65K channels per detector • Asynchronous event counter for each channel • GUI displays – detector voltage, temp, event count – Graph of event count – Graph of pulse height spectrum – X-y scatter plot of coincidence. Slide 7 NASA Logo Engineering NASA LOGO EB Logo MARA Screen shot at Brookhaven Screen shot of Computer GUI displays for: Heatbeat - Detector Status - Heartbeat Slide 8 NASA Logo Engineering NASA LOGO EB Logo MARA Screen shot at Brookhaven Window Heartbeat - Detector Status - Heartbeat High Voltage Board Temp Threshold Event Counts (-Volts) (degrees C) (%) (per minute) 31336 A0 132 27 2.8 5622 32638 A1 132 32 2.4 6212 B0 blank blank blank blank B1 blank blank blank blank System Error Comm Status FIFO Error FIFO Full Full FIFO OK OK A1 & A2 Window Event Count History - Event Counts Per Minute Graph with axis scale 0 - 15000 with Force Graph Update button and options for Force Scand and Scale Limit Window MARA Control Bar Buttons for Instrument Control, Real-Time Data, Configure Instrument, File Download, EXIT MARA Window XY Scatter - S-Y Scatter Graph A1 Axis 0X to 100X and A2 Axis 0X to 100X Options for 1st Detector, 1st Det Scale, 2nd Detector, 2nd Det Scale, Show Zeroes Window Pulse Height Spectrum Graph - Detector Pulse Height Spectrum Axis range 0 - 1800 Options for Displayed, Not Displayed, Detector, Y-Axis Y Scale Limit, Reduce Y Scale, X-Axix, Zoom Scale, Zoom MIN Slide 9 NASA Logo Engineering NASA LOGO EB Logo Brookhaven 1000 MeV Fe Run 3 Det A0. Axis range 0 - 16 and 10 - 64090 Slide 10 NASA Logo Engineering NASA LOGO EB Logo Fe beam no shielding Brookhaven March 2006 Run 3 XY-Scatter with axis labels 0 - 70000 Slide 11 NASA Logo Engineering NASA LOGO EB Logo Fe beam with plastic shield Brookhaven March 2006 Run 2 XY-Scatterplot with axis labels 0 - 70000 Slide 12 NASA Logo Engineering NASA LOGO EB Logo MARA with TEPC Detector Image of MARA with TEPC Detector Slide 13 NASA Logo Engineering NASA LOGO EB Logo MARA Conclusion • Phase I for initial design and testing has been completed. • Phase II to incorporate the lessons learned and expand the sensor capabilities has been initiated. – Options to utilize TEPC or Silicon detectors on the same DAQ board design. – Hardware noise reduction. – Software improvements. – As the design is improved continued testing is required for verification. • The MARA System design and DAC design goals are realistic and within the capabilities of current electronics and software. There are no obstacles in the technologies being used. • A modular data acquisition system coupled with real-time software built around modern industry standards can fulfill the radiation monitoring needs within the limited budget and schedule of a flight project.