CubeSats and Crowd-Sourced Monitoring for Single Event Effects Hardness Assurance

• Published in: IEEE transactions on nuclear science Vol. 64; no. 1; pp. 293 - 300
• Main Authors: Sierawski, Brian D., Warren, Kevin M., Sternberg, Andrew L., Austin, Rebekah A., Trippe, James M., McCurdy, Michael W., Reed, Robert A., Weller, Robert A., Alles, Michael L., Schrimpf, Ronald D., Massengill, Lloyd W., Fleetwood, Daniel M., Monteiro, Anthony, Buxton, Gerald W., Brandenburg, Jonathan C., Fisher, W. Burns, Davis, Robert
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-01-2017; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Cubesat; Energy; Integration; Payloads; Proton radiation effects; Protons; Radiation; radiation hardness assurance; Satellites; Sensitivity; single event effects; Single event upsets; Space vehicles; Telemetry
• ISSN: 0018-9499; 1558-1578
• DOI: 10.1109/TNS.2016.2632440

New mechanisms of radiation sensitivity, such as low-energy proton SEU, potentially hinder the ability to define part-level failure rates and perform worst-case analysis. Ground-based radiation testing demonstrates sensitivity and is useful for understanding mechanisms, but alone is not enough to quantify error rates. If radiation-induced error rates cannot be obtained through direct integration of the part response with the space environment, validated models must be developed. Models for SEU rate predictions for memories sensitive to low-energy protons have been proposed in a number of recent publications. In this paper, we use a CubeSat platform and crowd-sourced monitoring by the worldwide amateur radio community to measure the on-orbit response of a memory useful for evaluation of these models. We find that even for memories with no discernible proton SEU threshold, classical models for proton rate prediction perform well. This illustrates the capability of small satellite missions to complement ground based tests.