News Transistors on NASA's Europa satellite can't handle space radiation, putting mission at risk — repair could require 'baking' the MOSFETS inside the...

[Admin]

The Infineon transistors NASA used on the Europa Clipper had a higher-than-expected failure rate when exposed to radiation. The agency now has to see how it will affect the Jupiter mission and what steps it should take to keep the satellite on schedule.

Transistors on NASA's Europa satellite can't handle space radiation, putting mission at risk — repair could require 'baking' the MOSFETS inside the... : Read more

 

[LabRat 891]

So, in summary:
GPU's artifacting and NASA's gonna bake it, nearly half-a-billion miles from home?
'Aight.

 

[derekullo]

NASA: We need good stuff!
Infineon: We got that! Will you be subjecting the stuff to high levels of radiation?
NASA: That's classified!

 

[Sippincider]

Well at least this surfaced before their $5 billion craft stopped working near Jupiter...

 

[scottslayer]

This was because the company wasn’t aware of how NASA was going to use its transistors.

What did they think NASA was going to do with them?

 

[edzieba]

A lot of misunderstanding about the situation.

First, currently testing is undergoing to see if the particular batch of MOSFETS installed on EC are affected at all. The issue is one that is not even consistent across a given wafer, so the MOSFETS themselves may or may not be affected. The ideal case would be that these MOSFETS are fine, and EC can launch within the current window.

If these MOSFETS are affected, then there are two options. The first is to disassemble EC down to the board level and replace the MOSFETS with like-for-like ones that are unaffected by the (resolved years ago) process issues. The second is to fly with the MOSFETS and mitigate in operation. This is where annealing comes into play: after any damage from radiation occurs to the MSOFETs, then annealing can be used to restore functionality. Not only is this a major risk to mission operations, it also imposes other constraints on the mission like overall lifetime in a high-rad environment (which affects orbit selection, observation target selection, etc).