Small Plasma Spectrometer Power - M. Henry Cooke

This thesis describes the design, manufacturing, and testing of a high voltage power supply for an electron spectrometer to be used on a small spacecraft. The challenge was reducing complexity, size, and power consumption enough to be useful for a CubeSat or a sounding rocket sub-payload.

The power supply has two purposes: i) it produces DC at roughly 2000 V for a microchannel plate detector and ii) it produces exponential voltage sweeps from about +4000 V to below 5 V for an electrostatic analyzer. This power supply uses solid state relays for a charge pump and for producing

voltage sweeps with capacitive discharge. The detector power supply is software and hardware regulated to provide tunable output up to 2400 V, with voltage drift and ripple of around ±1%. The power supply is managed by an MSP430 microcontroller