Miniaturized Data Acquisition System for Extreme Temperature Environments

A data acquisition system is being developed for use on the NASA Lunar-Mars series of missions. The unit will accept inputs from multiple types of sensors, employing three types of input channels that each incorporate programmable elements to accommodate a wider variety of input signals. Based in part on a subsystem called the remote health node (RHN) that was originally developed during the 1990s for use on the now-defunct NASA X-33 "space plane", the remote electronics unit (REU) is being developed using a 0.5 micron silicon germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS technology from IBM with a circuit library that has been designed to operate normally across a temperature range from -180 degrees C up through +125 degrees C.