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A practical lunar telescope requires high resolution imaging array detectors that are immune to (or can be easily shielded from) solar flare particle radiation and cosmic rays. Charge-coupled devices (CCDs), the detectors of choice for ground-based applications, fall short in this respect because of their high susceptibility to radiation induced bulk traps and loss of charge transfer efficiency (CTE). Blooming in CCDs also limits the dynamic range and degrades resolution, while the well known red leak problem hinders observiations in the ultraviolet. We describe an ongoing program at NASA GSFC to develop intensified random-access Charge-Injection Devices (CIDs), a new generation of space uv detectors which do not have the shortcomings of CCDs. CIDs, like CCDs, are silicon array detectors. Unlike CCDs, however, CIDs have more than 100x greater tolerance to ionizing particle radiation. Since CIDs do not transfer charge, CTE degradation has very little effect on the overall sensitivity and noise level. CIDs can perform extremely fast windowing of selected regions of interest with high signal levels (e.g. bright cores of galaxies or strong emission lines, etc) while monitoring the remainder of the array at lower rates. This selective readout ability plus the lack of blooming give CIDs a high dynamic range of operation but with minimal demands on the memory storage and telemetry data bandwidth. We demonstrate the operation of a row-windowing CID and discuss the potential applications of these devices to astronomical research from the moon.
