Development of Space Qualified Signal Processing Readout Electronics for HabWorlds and Origins Space Telescope Detector and Arrays

The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) — a flagship ultraviolet/optical/infrared space telescope recommended by the National Academies’ Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics — will require detector technologies capable of supporting significantly larger pixel-count arrays than previous missions.

Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs), naturally suited to microwave multiplexing readout, are already in use across several balloon-borne missions with FPGA based systems. To transition this capability to space, we are developing a radiation-hardened detector readout system that builds directly on the technical and environmental requirements defined by the PRIMA mission.

PRIMA serves as a critical pathfinder, informing the radiation tolerance, resource constraints, and on-board processing capabilities needed for HWO. In this work, we present our current results on algorithm implementation, hardware architecture, and firmware development using the radiation-hardened AMD Kintex Ultrascale FPGA, aligning with PRIMA’s stringent specifications to ensure compatibility with future space-based observatories like HWO.

Tracee Jamison-Hooks, Lynn Miles, Sanetra Newman-Bailey, Oketa Basha, Abarna Karthikeyan, Sarah E. Kay, Sean Bryan, Philip Mauskopf, Thomas Essinger-Hileman, Jason Glen, Sumit Dahal, Adrian Sinclair, Kathryn Chamberlain

Comments: 4 pages, 6 figures, presented at The International Symposium on Space Terahertz Technology (ISSTT) 2025, Berlin, Germany (Apr 6th-9th, 2025). It is submitted as part of the conference proceedings
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det); Space Physics (physics.space-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2508.00322 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2508.00322v2 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2508.00322
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Submission history
From: Sarah Kay
[v1] Fri, 1 Aug 2025 05:11:53 UTC (1,751 KB)
[v2] Wed, 6 Aug 2025 03:13:17 UTC (676 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00322

Astrobiology,