Extending the Lifetime of ESA's X-Ray Observatory XMM-Newton

Kirsch, Marcus; Martin, Jim; Rudolph, A.; McDonald, Alastair; Kresken, Rainer; Elfving, Anders; Pantaleoni, Mauro; Godard, Thomas; Pfeil, Norbert; Finn, Timothy; Webert, Detlef; Weissmann, Uwe; Vasconcelos, André

doi:10.2514/5.9781624101991.0503.0522

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…The reaction wheel performance is excellent, with no evidence of caging as experienced by XMM-Newton [10] or increased power consumption.…”

Section: Moving Parts In Integralmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Implementation of the so called 4-wheel-drive, where INTEGRAL runs on all four reaction wheels, as done for XMM-Newton [10] would certainly be technically feasible for INTEGRAL and would lead to a fuel saving of the order of 50%. Due to the currently very healthy fuel margin, there is little justification for doing this, in particular since it is likely that the solar arrays will degrade to the point where we cannot power the payload before the fuel is exhausted.…”

Section: Extending Lifetime Limiting Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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INTEGRAL operations beyond the design lifetime - Challenges of running an 11 year old mission

Huebner¹,

Southworth²,

Kirsch³

et al. 2014

SpaceOps 2014 Conference

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However, major challenges this "old" mission faces are the aging on-board systems, the ongoing evolution of ground-segment technology, manpower turnover and a tightening budget. This paper summarises the effects of aging of the INTEGRAL spacecraft components and its ground segment in times of austerity as well as their impact on operations, team structure, costs and scientific programme execution. Furthermore, it discusses how to retain expertise and interest and illustrates the potential of extending INTEGRAL's mission well into the next decade.

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“…The reaction wheel performance is excellent, with no evidence of caging as experienced by XMM-Newton [10] or increased power consumption.…”

Section: Moving Parts In Integralmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Extending Lifetime Limiting Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

INTEGRAL operations beyond the design lifetime - Challenges of running an 11 year old mission

Huebner¹,

Southworth²,

Kirsch³

et al. 2014

SpaceOps 2014 Conference

Self Cite

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“…Particles approaching the spacecraft and its instruments can have various effects on their performance and lifetime. Over the 20 years of operating XMM-Newton in orbit, we see minor degradation effects on silicon devices like the instrument's CCDs (Kirsch et al 2005) and the solar panels that generate the energy for the spacecraft (Kirsch et al 2014). In addition, so-called single event upsets (SEUs) created by a high-energy particle can upset the onboard software and the subcomponents of the spacecraft as well, especially the latching current limiters (LCLs).…”

Section: Effects Of Charged Particles On the Spacecraft Platform And ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of minimum ionising particles and soft protons using XMM-Newton EPIC pn-CCD as a particle detector

Bender

Canio

Freyberg

et al. 2023

A&A

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Context. Spacecrafts with imaging telescopes often carry a charge-coupled device (CCD) in their focal plane to detect electromagnetic radiation. Charged particles such as electrons, protons, and heavy ions can reach the CCD and deposit their energy in the detector material. To counteract this undesirable effect, algorithms are usually implemented to reject them. On the other hand, CCDs can also be seen as particle detectors. Aims. Even though rejection algorithms are often active to immediately discard undesired radiation, data including charged particles of ESA's XMM-Newton and Gaia were stored over the whole mission lifetime. In this article we primarily analyse and characterise the charged particles that were detected by XMM-Newton. A comparison to data from Gaia's CCDs is also presented. Methods. To characterise the particle flux in the spacecraft orbits we used all publicly available observations where no rejection algorithm was used in combination with observations where the rejection algorithm was used. The particle flux is analysed over time and space of the XMM-Newton orbit. Comparisons to external data are shown as well. Results. Our analysis shows that the rate of charged particle events has a modulation of about 11 years and that particle flux and solar activity are anti-correlated. Moreover, we also show that often more than one charged particle hits the CCD simultaneously. Conclusions. Rejection algorithms are typically used to remove charged particle detection and preserve the scientific data missions. In this article, using XMM-Newton and Gaia data, we show that by neglecting rejection algorithms, charged particles detected on CCDs can be analysed and characterised over the spacecraft orbit.

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Extending the Lifetime of ESA's X-Ray Observatory XMM-Newton

Cited by 2 publications

References 29 publications

INTEGRAL operations beyond the design lifetime - Challenges of running an 11 year old mission

INTEGRAL operations beyond the design lifetime - Challenges of running an 11 year old mission

Analysis of minimum ionising particles and soft protons using XMM-Newton EPIC pn-CCD as a particle detector

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