Engineering
We provide engineering expertise to manage, design, build, and test instrumentation for a diverse range of space and ground-based projects including NASA's flagship missions and Explorer’s programs as well as cubesats, high-altitude balloons, sounding rockets and ground-based telescopes. We’ve led over 10 missions from concept and proposal to delivery at the launch pad.
Our engineering team can provide project management, mission systems engineering, safety, and mission assurance as well as core disciplines such as electrical, mechanical, optical, thermal, and technical assembly. We have a proven track record of delivering both highly specialized instrument suites and spacecraft—on time and within budget—for numerous NASA missions. Our state-of-the-art facilities support cleanroom fabrication and assembly, along with environmental testing.
We are known for designing custom power supplies and detectors. We design power supplies with very specific voltages, which deliver anything from very low voltages (as low as 1 volt) to extremely high voltages of 15,000 volts or more. We design and build state-of-the-art microchannel plate detectors (MCPs) that can sense light ranging from optical wavelengths all the way down to X-rays. Our MCPs were used on the Hubble space telescope, and we’re currently working to develop the detectors for NASA’s next generation space telescope, called LUVOIR (Large Ultraviolet Optical Infrared Telescope).
We also build:
- Electric Fields and Radio Antennas: vector electric field measurements with dual-use radio capability (DC to MHz) via booms that also serve as antennas
- Electrostatic Analyzers: instruments for ions and electrons that operate over 6 orders of magnitude in energy with high resolution, many orders of magnitude in sensitivity, and with moderate mass resolution.
- Energetic particle detectors: scintillator instruments that measure flux, spectra, and composition of energetic particles (SEPs, radiation belts) from keV to MeV
- Gamma-Ray and X-Ray Spectrometers: expertise across Ge/Si/CdTe detectors, cryostats, front-end ASIC/FPGA, indirect imaging, and focused hard-X optics
- Optics Systems: end-to-end capability from optical design and tolerancing through opto-mechanical/thermal engineering, coatings, contamination-controlled integration, and TVAC/vibe test.
- UV Spectrometers: vertically-integrated capability in photon-counting detectors and full UV instruments (EUV/FUV), from optics/coatings through detectors, calibration, contamination control, and flight operations.
Electrical Engineering
Our engineers have a wealth of experience handling the unique constraints of designing electrical systems for use in space. We’ve built electronic systems that can withstand the harshest environments. Our engineers work to retain the lost art of analog engineering, which produces electronic circuits that are more reliable in the face of extreme temperature swings and radiation of the space environment. We have the capability to design and build custom power converters, which are more efficient than off-the-shelf alternatives. With expertise encompassing the traditional as well as the state-of-the-art, our engineers find ingenious solutions to the problems of spaceflight design.
Mechanical Engineering
Our mechanical engineers are involved with missions throughout their lifecycles, from concept through prototyping, testing, assembly, launch and data collection. Rather than passing a design from one department to another, they draft, build and test their own designs, which provides them with unique insight into hardware capabilities. They troubleshoot if anything doesn’t function as expected and find ways to correct problems remotely. They also consult when a mission takes on new objectives, re-running thermal models in cases when a spacecraft successfully completes its primary mission and is sent into a new orbit.
Optical Engineering
Our optical engineers are fully integrated throughout the duration of a project. They create optical designs in Ansys Zemax OpticStudio that meet challenging requirements and packaging constraints. They work with vendors through all phases of component specification and procurement, including integration of optical instruments and full optical testing. Our optical engineering staff has supported numerous optical instruments over the years, from the X-ray regime and the deep ultraviolet to the far infrared. Recent missions with a strong optical hardware component include ICON FUV and EUV, DESI, EOM, and KPF.
Fabrication
We operate an in-house fabrication shop, fully equipped with CNC computer-controlled machining capabilities as well as manual lathes, milling machines and other manual machining capabilities. Our machinists can fabricate almost any kind of material, including metals ranging from standard 6061 aluminum alloy to notoriously difficult-to-work titanium, as well as ceramics, plastics and more exotic materials like sapphire and niobium. The deep interaction between machinists and engineers at SSL is the key to our success and allows us to push the boundaries of what is possible in space science.
Quality Assurance
Success is a core value at SSL. We’ve established an in-house quality assurance system, which ensures that all SSL products and services will achieve mission success for our clients. It incorporates our own precision standards and our partners’ operating procedures, including NASA’s parts and workmanship standards. With the ISO Standard evolving from a procedural-based system to a process-based quality management system that emphasizes continual improvement, we’ve aligned our quality assurance system to the International Standard ISO 9001:2000 and AS9100.
Mission Operations and Technical Facilities
Mission Operations System
Our mission operations system has managed 7 world-class science missions and operated 11 spacecraft. Our newly refurbished mission operations center uses all-electronic procedures and spacecraft telemetry dashboards that sync to any web-browser in the world in real time. Our ground station network incorporates almost all US government (including NASA’s DSN) and commercial ground stations in the world. We also carry a flight dynamics and mission design group and a spacecraft data center, which can process and distribute payload data worldwide. We control spacecraft in Earth, lunar and solar orbits as well as on interplanetary trajectories.
Cleanrooms
We have several cleanrooms certified at Class 10000. All of the surfaces are kept dust and microbe-free for fabricating sensitive space instruments, which are vulnerable to contamination. The cleanrooms contain vacuum chambers, flow benches, computers, testing equipment, and electronics equipment. We vary protocols for the cleanrooms based on the requirements for a given project. For example, fabrication of instruments for the MAVEN Mars mission required stringent planetary protection measures.
Environmental Testing
We have unique facilities for environmental testing that allow our engineers to do multiple checks throughout the design process instead of waiting for the final flight test to discover problems. Our thermal vacuum chambers can chill and bake instruments to simulate the conditions they will be exposed to in space. They accommodate full mechanical deployments of instruments, at temperatures from over 100℃ to well below -100℃. We test our electronics inside the chambers to ensure proper functionality. We also perform full G-negated deployments of antennas and booms up to 7 meters in length inside specially built chambers. We also have test ovens for component degassing and instrument bake-out and a vibration table that can shake instruments up to 17 pounds.
Faraday Cage
Used for EMI/EMC testing, our Faraday cage is comprised of coils used to null electromagnetic fields. They can be used to test the induction and conduction of electromagnetic signals to and from instruments. The cage is approximately 15x15x10 ft.
High Bay
The High Bay is a 60-foot high (4 story) open area with approximately 2000 square feet of floor space and two cranes rated at 2 and 10 tons. It provides balcony access on 2 stories and has a unique control/top-access room on the fourth floor, which provides access from the top (e.g., for testing of boom and antenna instruments). With large entry access, large open volume, and heavy lift cranes, the High Bay is an essential facility for assembly of large scientific instruments or payloads for high altitude balloons, rockets, and satellites. It currently houses a thermal vacuum chamber testing facility.
Analytical Services
Our analytical services laboratories are equipped with multiple, state-of-the-art instruments for analysis of terrestrial and extraterrestrial samples and of aerospace engineering materials, Instruments include a scanning electron microscope for analysis of solid materials and plasma spectroscopy for the chemical analysis of dissolved samples.
Scanning Electron Microscope
We use a Tescan Vega XM3 Scanning Electron Microscope with integrated EDS microanalysis system. The instrument uses a tungsten filament and has a large chamber and range of motion that allows samples up to 20 cm x 20 cm to be analyzed. The instrument has low vacuum capability, allowing for imaging and microanalysis of non-conductive samples without applying surface coatings. Resolution varies by sample type but features <100 nm can be resolved for most samples.
The X-ray microanalysis system is an Oxford Instruments x-max 80 EDS detector. The instrument also has numerous automated scanning features, allowing for imaging and data collection over large areas, and automatic feature detection and. It uses the current AZtec software suite, with Particle automation package, which allows automated X-ray mapping of large areas that can be combined to provide gigapixel elemental maps. This feature automatically identifies up to 100,000 particles per run according to preset parameters for particles of interest, based on average Z, size and/or shape using the BSE images it collects. The chemical compositions of these particles can then be analyzed with EDS, at a significant time savings compared to traditional analysis methods. Automated image collection and montaging allows for sub-micron imaging over large areas, up to 100 cm^2 during an overnight run.
For SEM services, please contact: ajbixler[at]berkeley.edu
Inductively Coupled Plasma Analyses
We use a Thermo Fisher iCAP 6300 Duo instrument for inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), which analyzes up to 70 elements in aqueous solutions (dilute nitric or hydrochloric acid) at concentrations of parts per million (ppm) to parts per billion (ppb). It is routinely used for analyzing major/minor elements (Na through Ni) in extraterrestrial samples, but other elements can be easily added, or new methods can be set up for specific mixtures of elements. We generally use a quartz torch and quartz sample introduction system but have a Teflon spray chamber and a ceramic injection tube available for dilute HF solutions (up to 5%).
We also use an Agilent 8800 Triple Quad ICP-MS instrument for analyzing major and trace elements in aqueous solutions at concentrations of parts per million (ppm) to parts per trillion (ppt). he instrument is equipped with a multipole-based collision/reaction cell (CRC), which eliminates molecular interferences by using a collision gas such as helium or hydrogen. Unlike the ICP-OES, this instrument is able to do isotopic measurements at a few permille precision.
For ICP services, please contact: kcwelten[at]berkeley.edu & ajbixler[at]berkeley.edu
