KID Detector Readout Electronics Development for Habitable Worlds Observatory

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Bryan, Sean, Barnaby, Hugh, Basha, Oketa, Bradford, C. Matt, Chamberlin, Kathryn, Cothard, Nicholas, Dahal, Sumit, Essinger-Hileman, Thomas, Geist, Alessandro, Glenn, Jason, Jamison-Hooks, Tracee, Karthikeyan, Abarna, Mauskopf, Philip, Miles, Lynn, Newman, Sanetra Bailey, Roberson, Cody, Rostem, Karwan, Sinclair, Adrian
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Bryan, Sean
Barnaby, Hugh
Basha, Oketa
Bradford, C. Matt
Chamberlin, Kathryn
Cothard, Nicholas
Dahal, Sumit
Essinger-Hileman, Thomas
Geist, Alessandro
Glenn, Jason
Jamison-Hooks, Tracee
Karthikeyan, Abarna
Mauskopf, Philip
Miles, Lynn
Newman, Sanetra Bailey
Roberson, Cody
Rostem, Karwan
Sinclair, Adrian
author_facet Bryan, Sean
Barnaby, Hugh
Basha, Oketa
Bradford, C. Matt
Chamberlin, Kathryn
Cothard, Nicholas
Dahal, Sumit
Essinger-Hileman, Thomas
Geist, Alessandro
Glenn, Jason
Jamison-Hooks, Tracee
Karthikeyan, Abarna
Mauskopf, Philip
Miles, Lynn
Newman, Sanetra Bailey
Roberson, Cody
Rostem, Karwan
Sinclair, Adrian
contents We present the status and goals of the readout electronics system we are developing to support the detector arrays in the coronagraph instrument on the NASA Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) mission currently in development. HWO aims to revolutionize exoplanet exploration by performing direct imaging and spectroscopy of 25 or more habitable exoplanets, and to resolve a broad range of astrophysics science questions as well. Since exoplanet yield depends critically on the detector dark count rate, as we show in this paper, the ambitious goals of HWO require arrays of single-photon energy-resolving detectors. We argue that Kinetic Inductance Detectors (KIDs) are best suited to meet these requirements. To support the detectors required for HWO and future far-IR missions, at the required power consumption and detector count, we are developing a radiation-tolerant reconfigurable readout system for both imaging and energy-resolving single photon KID detector arrays. We leverage an existing RFSoC-based system we built for NASA balloons that has a power consumption of 30 Watts and reads out 2000-4000 detectors (i.e. 7-15 mW/pixel), and move to a radiation tolerant Kintex Ultrascale FPGA chip to bring low-power wide bandwidth readout to a space-qualified platform for the first time. This improves significantly over previous spaceflight systems, and delivers what is required for NASA's future needs: ~100,000 pixels with less than 1 kW total power consumption. Overall, the system we are developing is a significant step forward in capability, and retires many key risks for the Habitable Worlds Observatory mission.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_14363
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle KID Detector Readout Electronics Development for Habitable Worlds Observatory
Bryan, Sean
Barnaby, Hugh
Basha, Oketa
Bradford, C. Matt
Chamberlin, Kathryn
Cothard, Nicholas
Dahal, Sumit
Essinger-Hileman, Thomas
Geist, Alessandro
Glenn, Jason
Jamison-Hooks, Tracee
Karthikeyan, Abarna
Mauskopf, Philip
Miles, Lynn
Newman, Sanetra Bailey
Roberson, Cody
Rostem, Karwan
Sinclair, Adrian
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
We present the status and goals of the readout electronics system we are developing to support the detector arrays in the coronagraph instrument on the NASA Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) mission currently in development. HWO aims to revolutionize exoplanet exploration by performing direct imaging and spectroscopy of 25 or more habitable exoplanets, and to resolve a broad range of astrophysics science questions as well. Since exoplanet yield depends critically on the detector dark count rate, as we show in this paper, the ambitious goals of HWO require arrays of single-photon energy-resolving detectors. We argue that Kinetic Inductance Detectors (KIDs) are best suited to meet these requirements. To support the detectors required for HWO and future far-IR missions, at the required power consumption and detector count, we are developing a radiation-tolerant reconfigurable readout system for both imaging and energy-resolving single photon KID detector arrays. We leverage an existing RFSoC-based system we built for NASA balloons that has a power consumption of 30 Watts and reads out 2000-4000 detectors (i.e. 7-15 mW/pixel), and move to a radiation tolerant Kintex Ultrascale FPGA chip to bring low-power wide bandwidth readout to a space-qualified platform for the first time. This improves significantly over previous spaceflight systems, and delivers what is required for NASA's future needs: ~100,000 pixels with less than 1 kW total power consumption. Overall, the system we are developing is a significant step forward in capability, and retires many key risks for the Habitable Worlds Observatory mission.
title KID Detector Readout Electronics Development for Habitable Worlds Observatory
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14363