Flight and ground demonstration of reproducibility and stability of photoelectric properties for passive charge management using LEDs

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the stability and reproducibility of UV-LED photoelectric properties for passive charge management in space instruments, confirmed through comprehensive flight and ground testing over a year.

Contribution

It provides the first extensive flight characterization data for UV-LEDs used in passive charge management, validating their reliability and consistency in space conditions.

Findings

UV-LEDs show stable photoelectric properties in space over six months.

Equilibrium potential is independent of UV intensity, reproducible within +/-6 mV.

Results are consistent with ground-based measurements, supporting LED use in space charge management.

Abstract

Charges as small as 1 pC degrade the performance of high precision inertial reference instruments when accumulated on their test masses (TMs). Non-contact charge management systems are required for the most sensitive of these instruments, with the TMs free-floating, and their charges compensated by photoelectrons in a feedback loop with a TM charge measurement. Three space missions have successfully demonstrated this technique: GP-B, LPF, and the UV-LED mission. Charge management techniques that eliminate the charge measurement and feedback systems, referred henceforth as passive, reduce the complexities and disturbance effects introduced by these systems, and are thus the subject of active research and development work. Passive charge management depends critically on the stability and reproducibility of the photoemission properties of a given system. In support of this work, we present comprehensive flight characterization data for a suite of 16 UV-LEDs in various configurations and 255+/-1 nm center wavelength. Flight data was acquired between December 2014 and December 2015 with the UV-LED instrument flown on SaudiSat 4. We back up our results with ground-based measurements performed in configurations comparable to the flight one between September 4, 2020, and October 8, 2020. All results confirm the excellent reliability of the UV-LEDs in the space environment, are fully consistent with the findings of ground studies, and support the approach of using LEDs for passive charge management. We find that the equilibrium potential of the TM, under illumination by the 255 nm LEDs, is independent of the UV intensity and reproduceable to about +/- 6 mV, or +/-6 fC/pF, over periods of up to six months. The value of the equilibrium potential is dependent on the geometry of the electric field between the TM and its enclosure, and thus on the exact configuration of the instrument.