Preliminary design of MYSat payload: Electron temperature and density probe (TeNeP) generator circuit

Malaysia Youth Satellite (MYSat) is a scientific 1U CubeSat initiated by School of Aerospace Engineering Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in 2016. The objective of the MYSat mission is to measure accurate electron density and temperature in E-layer of the ionosphere by a CubeSat. This mission was driven from a study which reported that Earthquake precursors could be analyzed from the ionosphere. Electron temperature and density probe (TeNeP) was the selected scientific instrument for MYSat. This instrument develops a technique by measuring the shift of electric floating potential (ΔVf) characteristics of an electrode immersed in plasma. The ΔVf characteristic of the plasma will then be retrieved from the instrument where the plasma’s electron density (ne) together with the temperature (Te) can be acquired. The TeNeP instrument has been proven not affected by the satellite potential variation effects, which is a common problem for electron measurements onboard small satellites, especially CubeSats. Therefore, the accurate Te and ne measured by MYSat could contribute to the on-going research regarding ionospheric physics and possible Earthquake precursor effects. An already developed TeNeP circuit based on a 2U platform has been redeveloped for MYSat’s 1U based platform. In this paper, several performance tests to the TeNeP generator circuit in the preparation of the MYSat will be shown and discussed.