Technical Design of the first Thai Space Consortium Satellite (TSC-1) and its Polar Orbiting Ion Spectrometer Experiment (POISE) Payload

Abstract

TSC-1 is the first Thai scientific research mission on a microsatellite, which has been designed and developed by the Thai Space Consortium. The satellite is planned to operate in Sun-synchronous Earth orbit at 500 - 600 km altitude and should be launch ready at the end of 2026. All design, construction, system integration, and testing are to be carried out in Thailand. The payloads include a Hyperspectral Imaging Camera and the Polar Orbiting Ion Spectrometer Experiment (POISE). The POISE detector is developed to characterize energetic ions for space weather monitoring. It uses the ΔE-E technique, comprising semiconductor detectors based on P-I-N junction parts designed and fabricated by Thai engineers and researchers, which in later versions will be combined with standard commercial parts (PIPs and silicon strip detectors) for benchmarking purposes. We will summarize the overall plan of TSC-1 and POISE, including the technical design, scientific concepts, geometrical acceptance, design of compact charge sensitive preamplifiers, and evaluation of the electronic dead-time of the data acquisition system. Radiation testing results for the engineering model prototype will also be presented.