Accelerator experiments with soft protons and hyper-velocity dust particles: application to ongoing projects of future X-ray missions

TL;DR

This paper discusses ongoing accelerator experiments with soft protons and hyper-velocity dust particles to evaluate their impact on X-ray detectors and mirror shells, aiding future space mission safety and performance.

Contribution

It presents the experimental setup, current status, and preliminary results of tests on X-ray detectors and mirror shells using accelerators for future space missions.

Findings

Preliminary data on soft proton scattering off X-ray mirrors.

Initial results on hyper-velocity dust impact effects.

Assessment of radiation and dust risks for space instrumentation.

Abstract

We report on our activities, currently in progress, aimed at performing accelerator experiments with soft protons and hyper-velocity dust particles. They include tests of different types of X-ray detectors and related components (such as filters) and measurements of scattering of soft protons and hyper-velocity dust particles off X-ray mirror shells. These activities have been identified as a goal in the context of a number of ongoing space projects in order to assess the risk posed by environmental radiation and dust and qualify the adopted instrumentation with respect to possible damage or performance degradation. In this paper we focus on tests for the Silicon Drift Detectors (SDDs) used aboard the LOFT space mission. We use the Van de Graaff accelerators at the University of T\"ubingen and at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Heidelberg, for soft proton and hyper-velocity dust tests respectively. We present the experimental set-up adopted to perform the tests, status of the activities and some very preliminary results achieved at present time.