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Testing Microshutter Arrays Using Commercial FPGA HardwareNASA is developing micro-shutter arrays for the Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). These micro-shutter arrays allow NIRspec to do Multi Object Spectroscopy, a key part of the mission. Each array consists of 62414 individual 100 x 200 micron shutters. These shutters are magnetically opened and held electrostatically. Individual shutters are then programmatically closed using a simple row/column addressing technique. A common approach to provide these data/clock patterns is to use a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). Such devices require complex VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL) programming and custom electronic hardware. Due to JWST's rapid schedule on the development of the micro-shutters, rapid changes were required to the FPGA code to facilitate new approaches being discovered to optimize the array performance. Such rapid changes simply could not be made using conventional VHDL programming. Subsequently, National Instruments introduced an FPGA product that could be programmed through a Labview interface. Because Labview programming is considerably easier than VHDL programming, this method was adopted and brought success. The software/hardware allowed the rapid change the FPGA code and timely results of new micro-shutter array performance data. As a result, numerous labor hours and money to the project were conserved.
Document ID
20080032416
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Rapchun, David
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Date Acquired
August 24, 2013
Publication Date
June 23, 2008
Subject Category
Instrumentation And Photography
Meeting Information
Meeting: SPIE 2008: Astronomical Instrumentation
Location: Marseille
Country: France
Start Date: June 23, 2008
End Date: June 28, 2008
Sponsors: International Society for Optical Engineering
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NAS5-01090
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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