Behavior of Si:As and Si:Sb Detectors in Space

摘要

We present an analysis of the behavior of the detectors on the Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) onboard Spitzer. The detectors of the IRS have been subjected to a 2.5 years of harsh space environments. We found that the number of protons hitting the IRS detectors is approximately 1 every second. We also present a simple analysis that shows that the Si:Sb detectors are about a factor 3 to 6 times more sensitive to the space environment than the Si:As detectors.