Effect of Space radiation on LEO nanosatellites

Abstract

The study is focused on the orbital mission for ZACUBE 2. The space radiations causes single bit errors. The protons and heavy ions are the main reason due to which they arises. The atmosphere for LEO is simulated on OMERE Software and was tested on TRIM in presence of different shielding effects. For all simulations involving shielding the thickness of 2 mm Al was used. It was proven that 2 mm Al is only effective up to 20 MeV for protons shielding and 30 MeV for heavy ions shielding. It is also important to note that various orbits and Al thickness do not affect the LET. This is important to know when trying to prevent and predict single event effects. Using TRIM the observations made in the paragraph above were re-enforced. Using this software a proton (positively charged hydrogen) was aimed and shot at 2 mm of aluminium. The maximum energy that the 2 mm Al was able to stop was just over 19 MeV. As a final conclusion a 2 mm Al shield is not able to block all the radiation that ZACUBE 2 will be exposed to, however, the majority of low energized particles will be stopped. In order to ensure that SEE does not occur additional mitigation techniques are needed to protect sensitive and vulnerable devices. These techniques could be Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR), Software EDAC schemes and others.