Peregrinus

Peregrinus on show: an Atmega328 microcontroller, X100-7 radiation detector, LSM9DS1 for magnetic field measurements and Rockblock9603 Iridium communication module. All with a specially designed startup circuit and battery pack: plenty of learning opportunities for high school students!

Peregrinus is an experiment fixed onboard Ariane 6, developed by high-school students at Sint-Pieterscollege in Brussels and the Institut Vallée Bailly in Belgium. The science mission’s goal in orbit is to measure the correlation between Earth’s magnetic field and the intensity of hard X-ray and soft gamma radiation.

The experiment is named after Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt, a French medieval scholar who studied magnetism and – unusual for his time – favoured an experimental approach to studying the natural world as opposed to a philosophical one.Orbiting Earth onboard Ariane 6 at an altitude of 580 km, Peregrinus will provide data on the impact of solar activity on and levels of radiation in Earth’s magnetic field. Better understanding in this area helps assess radiation risks to astronauts on the Moon or en route to Mars.

The radiation detector is a First Sensor X-100-7 encapsulated photodiode. It converts hard X and soft gamma photons into an electrical signal, and is compatible with 5V circuitry, as is the Iridium communications module that Peregrinus uses to downlink its findings.

Peregrinus will count photons in the  2 - 30 keV range over a one-second interval, while also measuring the strength of Earth's magnetic field using the 3D magnetometer on an LSM9DS1 inertial measurement unit. The data obtained over a 10 second time interval is then transmitted to the ground through the Iridium satellite network.

This all-in-one orientation unit can sense and provide information with nine degrees of freedom. It can tell where Earth is and how fast Peregrinus is moving in 3D space by measuring gravity; a magnetometer can determine where magnetic north is, and a gyroscope will measure the upper stage’s spin and twist. All this data is compressed to save space and transmitted to the ground via the Iridium satellite network.