If a particle strikes the sensor, a conduction path is set up by the formation of a plasma. The signals from the IPM subsystems are processed in parallel to reduce dead-time. At the same time, by operating in overlapping ranges of incident particle mass, comparison of results from the different subsystems will yield greater 'scientific' reliability. Despite independent operation, some coincidence information for individual impacts is exchanged between Subsystems for event validation. However, the failure of one detection subsystem should not in any way affect the correct operation of another.
Unregulated power is supplied by the spacecraft power subsystem on a single current-tripped supply.
Such an approach results from the telemetry allocation, which makes it impossible to transmit full information on all detected impacts, except at very low impact rates. A limited quantity of discrete data are mixed with the cumulative data and passed into the spacecraft telemetry stream by the CDF every 1.3 s during the last hour before closest approach and every 2.83 s prior to this.