Development, fabrication and service of instruments for use in electrical structures and related space flight measurements

The goals established at the onset of this program were fivefold: (1) design and fabricate a spherical electron, (2) design and fabricate a planar ion sensor, (3) design and fabricate a multioutput low voltage power converter, (4) design and fabricate digital interface electronics incorporating a nine bit successive approximation analog to digital converter, and (5) design and build suitable ground support equipment for the thorough testing and characterization of the DMSP SS/IE plasma electronics package. The most noteworthy achievement concerns the variety of both designs and assembly techniques tried and subsequently rejected in the early phases of the planar and the spherical sensor development. This particular development effort graphically pointed out two (2) pertinent things which generally apply for these types of sensors. These are (1) the simpler a design can be made the more reliable and reproducible the finished product is and (2) these types of sensors require the close supervision or support of the mechanical design by an electronics engineer familiar with the problems and the electrical techniques associated with high sensitivity electrometer instrumentation.