Testing at the Speed of Light The State of U.S. Electronic Parts Space Radiation Testing Infrastructure (2018) / Chapter Skim
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2 The Space Radiation Environment and Its Effect on Electronics
2 The Space Radiation Environment and Its Effect on Electronics
Pages 12-19
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From page 12... ...
This diversity of the radiation environments significantly complicates the ability to qualify electronics for space missions. SEEs -- the prompt response of semiconductor devices to the passage of a single ionizing particle -- are discussed in more detail below.
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From page 13... ...
Earth's geomagnetic field provides shielding against incident GCRs (and solar energetic particles) because it can effectively deflect the lower-energy particles.
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From page 14... ...
accelerated to high energies by solar electromagnetic fields and associated with periods of high solar activity. For periods of hours to days, the intensity of particles with kinetic energy well above the megaelectron volt range, and as high as a few gigaelectron volts is increased by many orders of magnitude over background solar wind levels, and also orders of magnitude more intense than galactic cosmic radiation at comparable energies.
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From page 15... ...
and up. 10 MeV is the minimum proton energy needed to penetrate a ~30 mil aluminum shield (a typical reference thickness for spacecraft design; 1 mil = 0.001 inch)
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From page 16... ...
Often the engineering and operating communities have learned about how radiation interacts with satellites to create these hazards the hard way -- by flight experience with actual anomalies. Not every satellite anomaly arises from space radiation, and it is difficult to quantify exact likelihoods of radiation-induced anomalies in currently orbiting systems for a number of reasons, including reporting requirements, proprietary information restrictions, and the common practice of categorizing anomalies as known behavior only once root cause and mitigation have been established.
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From page 17... ...
SEEs can occur at any point in a mission and in all space environments when a charged particle traverses a sensitive volume in an active semiconductor device, depositing sufficient charge to disrupt the normal functionality of that device (see Box 2.1)
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From page 18... ...
Having discussed the space radiation environment and its effect on electronics, in Chapter 3 the focus is on how spacecraft designers and component manufacturers assure the radiation hardening of electronics via testing at various facilities throughout the United States and a discussion of those facilities.
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From page 19... ...
The ionizing particle may be a heavy ion from the primary radiation environment (red line) with sufficient energy to traverse the entire device (represented by the thick red arrow in the figure)
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