Production and test of front-end electronics for the GLAST LAT silicon tracker

The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) is an astronomical satellite mission to explore the gamma-ray universe from low earth orbit, scheduled to be launched in 2007. The Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board GLAST detects gamma-rays by the pair-conversion process, using a silicon tracker-converter and a CsI calorimeter. A total of 880,000 strip signals on about 80 m2 of silicon are processed by the readout electronics. Two custom ASICs, the front-end readout chip (GTFE) and the readout controller chip (GTRC), are used in a front-end electronics module to meet the severe requirements for this space application. In this paper, production of the front-end electronics for flight units and their test results are described.