Plasma and Radiation Combined IN-situ Instrument (PRCINI)

The Plasma and Radiation Combined IN-situ Instrument (PRCINI) has broad potential applicability for Heliophysics investigations, both in the solar wind and the magnetosphere, where comprehensive energy coverage and mass and/or charge-state determination of suprathermal and energetic heavy ion species are required. The proposed PRCINI sensor will integrate the electrostatic analyzer (ESA) from the Cassini/Charge-Energy-Mass-Spectrometer (CHEMS) instrument (Krimigis et al., 2004) into a modified version of the Parker Solar Probe/Energetic Particle Instrument (EPI)-Lo sensor (McComas et al., 2016), resulting in a combined suprathermal and energetic ion instrument that measures energy, angular distribution, and compositional distributions from ~1 keV to ³15 MeV, as well as ion charge-state composition from ~15 (protons) to ~220 keV/q, over co-planar fields-of-view; energetic electron measurements will also be made from 30 keV to ³1 MeV. PRCINI will incorporate the ESA from CHEMS into the self-contained electrostatic optics of EPI-Lo, providing the following benefits: 1) use of a shared MCP and energy detectors, which simplifies the number of gains and thresholds which must be considered during calibration and flight; 2) reduction and simplification in the number of electrical and mechanical interfaces; and 3) overall reduction on spacecraft resources. Strategically, PRCINI closes an energy gap from ~40 to ~130 keV for heavy ions (e.g., O+) that has plagued independent plasma and energetic particle instruments on recent missions such as Van Allen Probes (Mauk et al., 2013) and Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS; Burch et al., 2016). This is especially important for magnetospheric investigations of transport in the plasma sheet, where determination of ion-species-dependent processes requires measurements of O+ that fall right aforementioned energy gap. The proposed investigation aims to raise the TRL from 3 (current based on completed SIMION simulations) to 5 by the end of the three-year project. The proposed PRCINI development consists of: 1) further SIMION simulations of the integrated instrument's electrostatic optics, building upon the preliminary results to determine the final relative locations of the elements of the new TOF subsystem; 2) demonstration of the ability to measure incoming ions through the CHEMS ESA (using a Cassini flight spare currently at JHU/APL) into a modified EPI-Lo sensor (TRL4); 3) laboratory demonstration of the electrical interface between potential next-generation energy detectors and the next-generation 'energy chip' ASIC (TRL4); 4) design of the integrated mechanical structure and a modified position anode board; 5) fabrication, assembly, and testing of a prototype 'half sensor' in thermal vacuum using a particle beam and radioactive sources (TRL5). Additional trades and modifications from the heritage sensors include development of a new time-of-flight (TOF) subsystem between the CHEMS ESA and EPI-Lo sensor; investigation of the appropriateness and accommodation of next-generation solid-state energy detectors (such as avalanche photodiodes or diamond solid-state detectors) and their integration with a next-generation 'TOF energy chip'; and modifying the heritage instruments to increase their geometric factors, both by directly opening the apertures and possibly integrating at 'top cap' electrode into CHEMS to enable electrostatic active control of the geometric factor.

Support NASA's Heliophysics strategic science objectives to understand the Sun and its interactions with Earth and the solar system, including space weather. This will be achieved by developing/demonstrating instrumentation technology necessary to address the following science goals: Explore the physical processes in the space environment from the Sun to the Earth and throughout the solar system; Advance our understanding of the connections that link the Sun, the Earth, planetary space environments, and the outer reaches of our solar system; Develop the knowledge and capability to detect and predict extreme conditions in space to protect life and society and to safeguard human and robotic explorers beyond Earth.

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