A design and evaluation of a miniaturised position-sensitive energetic particle detector for small satellites

This thesis is concerned with the design and evaluation of an in-situ energetic particle detector for space weather measurements consisting of a position-sensitive solid state detector and a coded aperture mask. The combination of the two presents a novel technique that provides far higher resolution angular information of supra-thermal particles in low-flux environments in two dimensions than previously possible, over a wide field of view. After consideration of the historical and current status of in-situ plasma instruments and coded aperture techniques, a proposed design was modelled with the Geant4 toolkit. A proof-of-concept instrument has been designed and assembled and then tested in the laboratory with three electron sources and the results have been analysed. While the available hardware limited the amount of characterisation possible, the instrument made impressive strides in understanding the setup itself and demonstrated its potential within the tested energy ranges. Further to this, a simulation of such an instrument or its descendants in a space plasma environment was completed and an outlook on the use of the concept in space was discussed. In some configurations this will allow simultaneous energy and high-resolution angular measurements of energetic particle fluxes on small satellites. If such an instrument were flown on a swarm mission, the possibilities for multi-point directional measurements of energetic particles would be hugely increased, especially at low altitudes