Compact Ion Mass Spectrometer (CIMS)
| Compact Ion Mass Spectrometer (CIMS) | |
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| Principal Investigator | Carlos Maldonado |
| Institution | Los Alamos National Laboratory |
| Technology Readiness Level | 3 |
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Overview
The Compact Ion Mass Spectrometer (CIMS) is a highly compact ion mass spectrometer capable of mass resolution for low-energy space plasma. CIMS is capable of measuring flux, energy, and mass of ions providing unique measurements of the ionospheric outflow and cold plasma in the magnetosphere. The CIMS utilizes a laminated collimator to define the field-of-view, a laminated electrostatic analyzer to selectively filter ions based on energy -per-charge, a magnetic sector analyzer to separate ions by mass-per-charge, and a microchannel plate with a position sensitive cross-delay anode assembly to detect the location of the ions on the detector plane. This ion mass spectrometer is a simple, compact, androbust instrument ideal for obtaining low-energy (0.1 eV to 1000 eV) ion composition measurements of ionospheric and cold magnetospheric space plasma. The instrument design has significant mass and volume savings when compared to current state-of-the-art ion mass spectrometers and has the additional advantage of being able to simultaneously measure multiple ion species signals of a given energy at 100% duty cycle, thus providing a true mass spectrum. The extremely low resource requirements of the CIMS instrument in combination with the relaxed fabrication techniques and ease of assembly allows for rapid and low-cost production.
Principle of Operations
Advantages and Disadvantages
Flight Heritage
Applications
Image Gallery
Funding
Presentations, Publications, and Patents
Publications
- C. A. Maldonado, H. Morning, G. R. Wilson, J. McGlown, D. Arnold, D. Reisenfeld, and M. Holloway, “An Ultra-Low Resource Ion Mass Spectrometer forCubeSat Platforms,” 2022 SmallSat Conference, Logan UT, 2022.
Presentations
- Maldonado, C. A., G. R Wilson, D. B. Reisenfeld, T. K. Kim, J. McGlown, M. Holloway, H. Morning, and D. W. Arnold, “An Ultra-Low Resource Ion MassSpectrometer for Observations of Planetary Ionospheres,” AGU Fall Meeting, Chicago, 2022. (LA-UR-22-32819)
Patents
- C. A. Maldonado and D. B. Reisenfeld, Compact and Ruggedized Collimated Laminated Electrostatic Analyzer for Investigating Space Plasmas - U.S.Provisional Application Number 63/396,173