Power Supply Unit HERMES-SP
Authors: Paolo Nogara, Giuseppe Sottile, Francesco Russo, Giovanni La Rosa, Melania Del Santo, Yuri Evangelista, Riccardo Campana, Fabio Fuschino, Fabrizio Fiore and on behalf of the HERMES team
HERMES-SP (High Energy Rapid Modular Ensemble of Satellites – Scientific Pathfinder) is a space mission based on a constellation of nano-satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), hosting new miniaturized detectors to probe the X-ray temporal emission of bright high-energy transients such as Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB) and the electromagnetic counterparts of Gravitational Wave Events (GWE). HERMES is scheduled for launch in 2022.
We present the Power Supply Unit (PSU) board which is a custom board designed to supply the payload electronics with special care to safety. The PSU has been designed only with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components. It guarantees a very fast protection from Latch-Up events (LU) for each CMOS electronic devices installed. The PSU is characterized by several cells designed with an architecture based on redundancy and hardware automatic procedure of recovery to avoid the photodetectors and front-end electronics irreversible damages.
Keywords: nano-satellites, PSU, Gamma Ray Burst (GRB), Gravitational Wave Events (GWE), COTS components, Latch-up protection
Back End Electronics onboard HERMES nano-satellites
Authors: Sottile G. and on behalf of the HERMES team
HERMES-TP/SP (High Energy Rapid Modular Ensemble of Satellites Technologic and Scientific Pathfinder) is a spaceborne mission based on a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation of six nano-satellites. The 3U nano-satellites host simple but innovative X-ray detectors, characterized by a wide energy band and excellent temporal resolution. They are dedicated to the monitoring and determination of the position of high energy cosmic transients, such as Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB), and the electromagnetic counterparts of Gravitational Wave Events. The Hermes project has been funded by different grants from the Italian Ministry of University and Research and by the Italian Space Agency, and by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program. The HERMES launch is planned in 2022.
We present here the Back End Electronics (BEE), one of the custom electronic boards of the payload based on an Intel Cyclone V E low power FPGA and on other commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronic components. The BEE collects the scientific events on the basis of a validation algorithm which is optimized to reject background events. The BEE communicates with the Payload Data Handling Unit (PDHU) through a robust protocol specifically developed by our team.
Keywords: Gamma Ray Burst, Nano-satellites, Back-End-Electronics
Design, integration and test of the scientific payloads on-board the HERMES constellation and the SpIRIT mission
Authors: Evangelista Y., Campana R. and on behalf of the HERMES team
HERMES (High Energy Rapid Modular Ensemble of Satellites) is a space-borne mission based on a constellation of nano-satellites flying in a low-Earth orbit (LEO). The six 3U CubeSat buses host new miniaturized instruments hosting a hybrid Silicon Drift Detector/GAGG:Ce scintillator photodetector system sensitive to X-rays and gamma-rays. HERMES will probe the temporal emission of bright high-energy transients such as Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs), ensuring a fast transient localization (with arcmin-level accuracy) in a field of view of several steradians exploiting the triangulation technique. With a foreseen launch date in 2023, HERMES transient monitoring represents a keystone capability to complement the next generation of gravitational wave experiments.
Moreover, the HERMES constellation will operate in conjunction with the Space Industry Responsive Intelligent Thermal (SpIRIT) 6U CubeSat, to be launched in early 2023. SpIRIT is an Australian-Iatalian mission for high-energy astrophysics that will carry in a Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) an actively cooled HERMES detector system payload.
In this paper we will illustrate the HERMES ans SpIRIT payload design, integration and tests, highlighting the technical solutions adopted to allow a wide-energy-band and sensitive X-ray and gamma-ray detector to be accommodated in a 1U Cubesat volume.
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Distributed architectures for a Gamma Ray Burst all-sky monitor
Authors: F. Fiore, N. Werner, E. Behar, M. Lavagna, M. Trenti and on behalf of the HERMES team
While the GW/GRB170817 event hinted at the enormous potential of the multi-messenger astrophysics, it remained, so far, unique. The situation will change in the next few years when Advanced LIGO/VIRGO and KAGRA will reach their nominal sensitivity. In the electromagnetic domain the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will soon revolutionize the investigation of transient sources in the optical band. An efficient X-ray all-sky monitor with good localisation capabilities will thus have a pivotal role in providing the high-energy counterparts of the GW interferometers and Rubin Observatory sources. To gain the required precision in localisation for unpredictable events in time and space requires a sensor distribution covering the full sky. We discuss the potential and the programmatic implications of large-scale -small platform distributed architectures based on the Camelot/GRBAlpha, HERMES, SpIRIT and GALI precursors, to build such a sensitive X-ray all-sky monitor.
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Calibration of the first detector flight models for the HERMES constellation and the SpIRIT mission
Authors: R. Campana, Y. Evangelista and on behalf of the HERMES team
HERMES (High Energy Rapid Modular Ensemble of Satellites) is a space-borne mission based on a constellation of six 3U CubeSats flying in a low-Earth orbit and hosting new miniaturized instruments hosting a hybrid Silicon Drift Detector/GAGG:Ce scintillator photodetector system sensitive to X-rays and gamma-rays.
Moreover, the HERMES constellation will operate in conjunction with the Australian-Italian Space Industry Responsive Intelligent Thermal (SpIRIT) 6U CubeSat, that will carry in a Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) an actively cooled HERMES detector system payload.
In this paper we will discuss the ground calibrations of the first HERMES and SpIRIT flight detectors, outlining the calibration plan, detector performance and characterization.
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