Oh man, this is terrible. Just months before launch of the Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter’s satellite, they discovered that some of the MOSFETS in the spacecraft might get fried by the Jovian radiation. 1500 MOSFETS. Ouch. Details here:
Vulnerable MOSFETS in NASA’s Europa Clipper
The next time I smoke a IRF510, I’m going to blame “Jovian Radiation.” I’m sure it has nothing to do with my RF design skills. de KB7ZUT
They recently brought in a new project manager who brought inn his own team.
They clearly should have gone with Thermatrons.
Here’s the NYT’s report on this in today’s edition: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/science/nasa-europa-clipper-radiation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.L04.0QSw.r5AYvoMywwVM&smid=url-share
Aren’t these things shielded against radiation, Faraday caged???
“Aren’t these things shielded against radiation, Faraday caged???” Europa is arguably the worst / hardest radiation environment imaginable at least in the inner solar system, due to exposure from Jupiter’s radiation belts. No sane engineer would ever guarantee operation in that place with anything like normal parts. This is the reason why all the electronics are in a heavily shielded ‘vault’ but with wall thickness limits given mass budgets. So, even at that, the single-source Infineon MOSFETs are also required – ultra radhard – to survive the particles that still get through even the thickest of shielding. Sadly, as the article says, the production line had an unrealized fault from excess water ingression precisely at the time NASA was sourcing the transistors. Tough situation.
“All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there.” Looks like a landing will be a long way off.
Designed before DEI Woke engineers. But there has to be deeper story to this. After all designing for high Rad environments is not something new for Nasa. So something else in the design and sourcing chain failed.