International Workshop on Instrumentation for Planetary Missions (2012) 1071.pdf

TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT FOR THE WHIPPLE MISSION CONCEPT – PRESENT STATUS AND FUTURE WORK. C. R. Alcock1, S. S. Murray2, R. P. Kraft1, A. T. Kenter1, T. M. Gauron1, M. Loose3, and M. Werner4, 1Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, 2Johns Hopkins University, 3Markury Scientific, 4JPL

Introduction: The Whipple mission, "Reaching into the Outer Solar System", was proposed to NASA's 2010 Discovery program and was awarded funding for technology development. Whipple will conduct the first direct, systematic study of the outer Solar system, the Kuiper belt, the Sedna region, and the Oort cloud, using a blind stellar occultation survey. The instrument will monitor photometrically 10,000 stars at a cadence of 40 Hz (or 20,000 at 20 Hz, ...) to search for stellar occultations by outer solar system objects to character- ize the size and spatial distribution of these objects. The occultations typically last less than a second, so the photometer must be able to continuously monitor the light curves of a large number of stars at video rates. The focal plane will be composed of 32 Teledyne H1RG sensors, each with a dedicated SIDECAR ASIC and an FPGA to process the light curve data and identify candidate occultation events. The H1RG sensor will be operated in a windowing mode with between 700 and 3000 windows per sensor at rates up to 40 Hz. We are currently developing an end-Ââto€ -Ââend€ system at SAO to evaluate the focal plane concept. This system includes a stellar occulta- tion simulator that stimulates the sensor with simulated light curves, a Teledyne sensor with custom readout software to operate the sensor and SIDECAR ASIC in this windowed mode, and an FPGA that will process the light curves and identify candidate events. In this presentation we will discuss the current status of our laboratory efforts and outline future work.