Total ionizing dose (TID) measurements at low temperature (60 K) of a Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) Microshutter Array (MSA) indicate that exposing the MSA to ionizing radiation causes some of the shutters to stop operating properly. The number of non-functional shutters depends on the applied bias. With increasing dose, the number of micro-shutters that become non-functional increases.

HAWC and SAFIRE are far-infrared experiments which will fly on the SOFIA aircraft.HAWC's detectors will operate at 0.2 Kelvin, while those of SAFIRE will be at 0.

Double-aluminized kapton (DAK) is commonly used in multi-layer insulation blankets in cryogenic systems. NASA plans to use individual DAK sheets in lightweight deployable shields for satellites carrying instruments. A set of these shields will reflect away thermal radiation from the sun, the earth, and the instrument's warm side and allow the instrument's cold side to radiate its own heat to deep space. In order to optimally design such a shield system, it is important to understand the thermal characteristics of DAK down to low temperatures. We describe experiments which measured the thermal conductivity and electrical resistivity down to 4 Kelvin and the emissivity down to 10 Kelvin.

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