BIOPAN - FLIGHT EXPERIMENT CARD

As part of the BIOPAN-0 test flight payload, ESA/ESTEC together with University of Siegen, designed an experiment called CARD, for flight on the first BIOPAN model. The CARD experiment, consisting of commercially available 128K-bit EEPROM cards and CR-39 plastic nuclear track detector foils, was flown in order to assess the EEPROMs sensitivity to cosmic rays and the CR-39 foils to measure the cosmic rays seen during the mission. The EEPROMs were unbiased during the flight so only the charged content of the memories could be assessed after returning to earth. This paper presents the results from a 15.6 day flight on-board the Russian Photon-8 satellite, launched October the 8th 1992 (altitude 300 km, inclination 62.8 degrees), and gives details of the ground testing and analyses performed.