Resilient Control Electronics

As the orbital space around the earth gets more and more crowded with civilian and military reconnaissance, weather, tracking, communication, and navigation satellites - civilian and military users become increasingly dependent on the services provided by these spacecraft. This situation increases the possibility of offense actions against some or all of these spacecraft. The possibility calls for the exploration of techniques to enhance the survivability of critical space-based infrastructure, particularly in the face of proximate nuclear blast. Current generation cryocooler electronics (CCE) do not address nuclear survivability as part of their mission profile. Iris Technology, together with North Carolina State University (NCSU), will investigate techniques, components, and materials that would lead to an enhanced survivability CCE. Iris Technology and NCSU will develop a CCE unit to drive a variety of cryocoolers, that is resilient, surviving natural and nuclear radiation events over a five year mission life. The new development will enhance Iris Technology CCE design, ICE-M2-200i (TRL 8), for nuclear survivability without significantly increasing mass and volume. Modifications will be made to enable self-protect mechanisms. Iris Technology and NCSU will establish representative nuclear blast environment will provide NCSU design documentation to allow the analysis of the susceptibility of the new design for nuclear survivability. In addition to finding the most robust parts, effort will be made to define techniques that may enhance survivability. One such technique is the ability to detect an oncoming event in order to turn off the electronics to potentially protect them from damage. With the limits and materials and techniques defined, the project team will develop breadboard CCE for radiation testing. This hardware will be compromised of the selected components and techniques. Care will be taken to ensure that the breadboard CCE design can easily be tested for damage. Size reduction techniques that have been developed by Iris Technology on other research projects will be applied, where possible. A breadboard informed by the results of the research and analysis will be built and tested. Approved for Public Release | 20-MDA-10601 (19 Oct 20)