Prototype Testing of a Modular High Voltage Power Supply for Space Applications

The Space High Voltage Power Supply team at Los Alamos National Laboratory has designed and developed a compact modular High Voltage Power Supply (HVPS) that will adhere to the 3U SpaceVPX (ANSI/VITA 78) specification using a conduction-cooled frame compliant with VITA 48. The HVPS will be flown as a part of the Experiment for Space Radiation Analysis (ESRA) 12U CubeSat and the Autonomous Ion Mass Spectrometer Sentry (AIMSS) missions. The HVPS system will provide static and dynamic high voltage potentials to drive next generation charged particle instruments designed to measure the space environment. The ESRA Demonstration and Validation (DemVal) project will rapidly test and mature space technologies by flying through the geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO). Operation within the radiation belts will provide flight heritage of critical technologies, such as the HVPS, in the most stressing conditions for near Earth orbits. The AIMSS mission will monitor background plasma environment on-board the International Space Station (ISS). The HVPS design will support a Space Wire Interface on the control plane and expansion plane as well as an I2C interface on the system management bus enabling development with low-cost commercial enclosures, backplanes, and other resources that can be leveraged during the design process. The power supply will support two unipolar high voltage outputs up to 5kVDC. The design will leverage a common control interface to allow the substitution of different high voltage multiplier and/or transformer configurations to tailor the output voltage and current drive capability. The design is intended to meet radiation hardness requirements for operation in GTO by employing radiation hardened components with >100kRad (Si) tolerance. The digital interface and control will be implemented using a Microchip microcontroller running FreeRTOS Real Time Operating System and Lattice FPGA that can be used as a Space Wire Router to connect between devices on the control and expansion planes. High Voltage outputs will be connected using an appropriately rated front panel connector. Overall system design and prototype testing of the HVPS unit will be presented.