Scientists at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., needed space-qualified instruments for their Living with a Star (LWS) space environments test bed (SET) experiment hardware. They found their solution at Space Micro Inc. in San Diego. Space Micro is providing its space dosimeter card for integration at NASA Goddard into the LWS SET, which was designed by Clemson University and delivered to NASA Goddard in 2007. Space Micro manufactured and tested the space-qualified card per NASA Goddard space quality standards. This experiment, called Dosimetry Intercomparison and Miniaturization Experiment (DIME), will monitor the radiation dose seen in space using several radiation-detector technologies. The objectives are to use five different commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) Micro-dosimeters to characterize radiation-induced total ionizing dose, displacement damage, and single-event effects in space. The Space Micro space dosimeter card “should enable the space weather community to learn a great deal more about the space environment and how it impacts our daily lives,” says Dave Strobel, chief executive officer of Space Micro. This technology provides data to enable dosimetry selection in future missions to characterize and resolve operational anomalies, and also to validate particle transport codes by varying shielding thicknesses on RADFETs. The DIME experiment card is to be launched within the next year. For more information, visit Space Micro Inc. online at www.spacemicro.com.
