NASA tests Infineon power MOSFETs for Europa Clipper mission
The US space agency NASA is testing the radiation performance of power MOSFETs from Infineon Technologies ahead of the launch of its Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter.
The power MOSFETs from Infineon’s acquisition of International Rectifier are used throughout the spacecraft electrical power systems for the Europa Clipper mission.
NASA engineers are extensively testing the MOSFETs at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California,after learning that some of these parts may not withstand the extremely high levels of radiation of the Jupiter system, which is the most intense radiation environment in the solar system.
Tests also are being conducted at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland. APL designed the main spacecraft body in collaboration with JPL and NASA Goddard.
The issue with the MOSFETs came to light in May when the mission team was advised that similar parts were failing at lower radiation doses than expected. In June 2024, Infineon issued an alert to notify users of this issue and is working with the mission team to support ongoing radiation test and analysis efforts.
Testing data obtained so far indicates some transistors are likely to fail in the high-radiation environment near Jupiter and its moon Europa because the parts are not as radiation resistant as expected.
However the electronics are enclosed in a vault with walls made of 1/3-inch thick (9.2-mm) sheets of aluminium-zinc alloy to protect the electronics from the intense radiation. The vault is bolted to the spacecraft’s propulsion module which houses the 24 engines.
The MOSFETs are US DLA QPL products up to MIL-PRF-19500 JANS level and the hermetic packages are hermetic packaging are also screened to the European ESCC-5000 specification.
The NASA team is working to determine how many MOSFETs may be susceptible and how they will perform in-flight. NASA is evaluating options for maximizing the transistors’ longevity in the Jupiter system and a preliminary analysis is expected to be complete in late July ahed of the launch window in October.
The Jupiter system is particularly harmful to spacecraft as its enormous magnetic field, 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field, traps charged particles and accelerates them to very high energies.
NASA says the issue that may be impacting the transistors on Europa Clipper is a phenomenon that the industry wasn’t aware of and represents a newly identified gap in the industry standard radiation qualification of transistor wafer lots.
However the launch preparations are still progressing, with the spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida here the team recently attached the high-gain antenna.
The launch period opens Oct. 10 and Clipper is set to arrive at Jupiter in 2030, where it will conduct science investigations to understand the potential habitability of Europa as it flies by the moon multiple times.
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