Advanced 360o FOV, wide energy range, non-HV, gated time of flight mass spectrometers for Small Satellites and Cubesats

The time of flight technique is widely used for composition analysis of space plasma instruments. The foil - MCP/CEM combination is commonly used for E x TOF mass analysis at the cost of energy threshold, scattering, and direct particle interaction which ultimately affect performance. An alternative method especially effective at low energies is gated time of flight where the start foil is replaced with electric gating. There are several advantages of electric gating, including elimination of heavy HVPS required for pre-reacceleration to overcome foil thresholds, non- destructive interaction with atomic and molecular ions before analysis, and electronic controllability including geometric factor adjustment for flux dynamic range, FOV optimization, electronic filtering of most abundant elements in favor of minor species, and other properties affecting directly the scientific and engineering performance of the instruments. In addition special secondary emission surfaces can be used for triple coincidence when needed. The combination of electric gating and special surfaces works in an extensive energy range from 0 to tens of KeV without the need of start foil/HVPS making thus the use attractive to small satellites and cubesats. Those characteristics will be elaborated in the context of a gated time of flight wide field of view and energy range ion spectrometer combined with a neutral mass spectrometer (WINMS) developed at GSFC. The instrument prototypes have mass resolution adequate to separate N, O, OH, OH2; also static from ram moving H allowing thus separation of outgassing from ambient gases. A first implementation INMS with a mass <600 grams and size <1.5U is the main payload of the EXOCUBE Cubesat mission launched in January 2015 and already produced flight data; a second upgraded implementation is on onboard the GSFC Dellingr 6U CubeSat scheduled for launch in late 2015; and ongoing developments are baselined for other satellite missions.