Background:
Amptek was founded in 1977 by Alan C. Huber and John A. Pantazis to fulfill the needs of space instrumentation for off-the-shelf, high performance, high reliability, small size and low power dissipation instruments and components. Shortly thereafter, Amptek hybrid preamplifiers became the standard for the space industry as they were used worldwide by instrument makers in both Earth salites and deep space probes. Numerous plasma analyzers, electron and ion detectors, and radiation monitors have been developed by Amptek and flown in both military, research, and commercial spacecraft.