A Compact Modular High Voltage Power Supply for Space Applications

The Space High Voltage Power Supply team at Los Alamos National Laboratory is currently designing a new compact modular High Voltage Power Supply (HVPS) that will adhere to the 3U SpaceVPX (ANSI/VITA 78) specification using a conduction-cooled frame compliant with VITA 48. The HVPS will be integrated into the Experiment for Space Radiation Analysis (ESRA) 12U CubeSat to provide static and dynamic high voltage potentials to drive next generation charged particle instruments designed to measure the space environment. The ESRA Demonstration and Validation (DemVal) project will rapidly test and mature space technologies. Operation within the radiation belts will provide flight heritage of critical technologies, such as the HVPS, in the most stressing conditions for near Earth orbits. The design and will support a Space Wire Interface on the control plane and expansion plane as well as an I2C interface on the system management bus enabling development with low-cost commercial enclosures, backplanes, and other resources than can be leveraged during the design process. The power supply will support two unipolar high voltage outputs up to 5kVDC. The design will leverage a common control interface to allow the substitution of different high voltage multiplier and/or transformer configurations to tailor the output voltage and current drive capability. The design is intended to meet radiation hardness requirements for operation in geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) by employing radiation hardened components with >100kRad (Si) tolerance. The digital interface and control will be implemented using a Vorago microcontroller running RTEMS Real Time Operating System and Lattice FPGA that can be used as a SpaceWire Router to connect between devices on the control and expansion planes. High Voltage output connections will use an appropriately rated front panel connector. Overall design and initial bench top measurements and simulations of the multiplier chains will be presented.