Gamma Light Interference in Technological Circuitry and Hardware
GLITCH is a project created by students at Luleå University of Technology (LTU). The project aims to create an experiment that measures the Single Event Upsets (SEU) experienced by electronic hardware in a stratospheric environment. The objective of the experiment is to understand the rate at which these SEUs occur with regards to high latitude of Kiruna and the 25th solar maximum.
The goal of the project is to design, assemble, test and fly the experiment within the REXUS/BEXUS program. The project team is divided into different subteams such as electrical, software, mechanical, outreach, science and management, all tasked with their respective parts of the project.
Ideally the data collected by the experiment would give insight to how much of a threat the combination of the environment around Kiruna and the solar maximum poses to stratospheric operations. This would in turn help future missions make informed design decisions to properly protect equipment and hardware.
REXUS/BEXUS
REXUS/BEXUS is a collaboration between the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt) and the Swedish National Space Agency. The purpose of REXUS/BEXUS is to provide students from European universities with the opportunity to conduct scientific and technical experiments using research rockets and high-altitude balloons.
REXUS is a research rocket that is launched from Esrange Space Center.
BEXUS consists of high-altitude balloons that are also released from Esrange Space Center. The balloons fly at an altitude of 20-30 kilometers for approximately five hours.
The GLITCH box
The experiment will be housed in the GLITCH box. Within the box there will be several SRAM chips which will be monitored and checked for errors by an Field Progammable Gate Array (FPGA). The FPGA will run software that checks for errors, if any are detected they are logged and corrected. In addition to this, there will also be a radiation sensor that continuously measures radiation. The box will also house other sensors that monitor vital parameters and ensure smooth operations.
What is an SEU
Bits of data are stored as 0s and 1s. When a high-energy particle from space hits a sensitive area it induces a current which can cause an unwanted ”flip” in one of these bits, changing a 0 to a 1 or vice versa. The flipping of bit logic (bitflip) is also referred to as a Single Event Upset (SEU). Although not always damaging hardware, internal software logic may be corrupted, resulting in glitches and malfunction.
