Radiation Testing of Electric Components for Space

The apparent void of space is actually awash in high-energy particle radiation, which can have harmful effects on delicate satellite components. The threat to spacecraft varies greatly based on their orbits. Ali Zadeh, head of ESA's Components Space Evaluation and Radiation Effects section, explains how electrical, electronic, and electro-mechanical (EEE) components - the fundamental building blocks of any space mission - are tested for this harsh environment, assessing their suitability for space. The European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC) in the Netherlands hosts a Cobalt-60 irradiation facility for highly-penetrating gamma ray testing, supplemented by a network of external European particle accelerator sites for electron, proton, and heavy-ion radiation testing.

Transcript

00:00:08 we are in the materials and electrical components laboratory we are part of the product assurance and safety department and we predominantly support our space projects i am the head of the component space evaluation and radiation effects section and in in my section we deal with

00:00:31 radiation effects on triple e components electronic components so we basically test the electronic components to make sure that they are suitable for flight in our spacecraft the space environment is a harsh environment and one of the components of the space environment is high energy particle radiation these particles can adversely affect

00:00:56 these components and in the worst case we may have a catastrophic failure of a component due to this radiation so we have to know how the components that we're flying behave under such environment and that is what we are doing in our laboratory we are

00:01:14 simulating the radiation environment that we see in space before we start an irradiation test campaign we first have to generate a test plan what we do is we set up a radiation experiment we have produced the boards and the various measuring equipment that

00:01:38 needs to be used during the tests and we will install this in the radiation cell itself in the control room we will initiate the radiation exposure and that means that we will raise the radioactive source so that the components that are placed in the radiation cell are exposed to this radiation which is in this case gamma

00:02:01 radiation gamma radiation is highly penetrating so it will penetrate our components and that is what we want because we are simulating the high energy particles that we have in space and during the testing we will typically perform several electrical parameter measurements to identify the drift that the component have with

00:02:24 increasing radiation levels and at the end of the test we can say whether the component is working well for the environment that is supposed to be flying in or whether the component do not meet our requirements the nature of the division that i'm working in is to support most european

00:02:47 space agency missions currently we are working on a mission to jupiter which is called juice where the radiation environment is much harsher than what we see at earth so it is much more challenging because the components that you have to fly they have to be able to handle much more radiation than we normally deal with

00:03:09 at the end of the day the work we do is to help europe be in the front forefront of science and technology related to space applications