Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)

The conversion of trigger events to their digital equivalent is a central component of any timing-based front end, with applications found in mass spectrometry, single channel analyzers, and a huge variety of 3D mapping and ranging systems. At the same time, ever- tightening size, weight, and power budgets for space launches with a skyrocketing (no pun intended) number of launches in the last decade have made application-specific integrated circuit solutions increasingly appealing. However, conventional analog methods of pulse discrimination introduce timing walk or are limited to a narrow...

Monitoring and building our understanding of space weather is necessary to protect current and future astronauts and hardware, as well as further our understanding of its effects on atmospheric development and loss. This project has developed two radiation-hardened sensor frontends to measure the ion composition of the solar wind aboard the Solar Probe ANalyzer for Ions (SPAN-Ion). SPAN-Ion uses time-of-flight mass spectrometry to distinguish ions by their mass: charge ratios; the target architecture for future missions decreases mass and increases speed in exchange for several orders of...