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NASA Examines Electrical Switches on Europa Clipper Spacecraft [1]

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Date: 2024-05-31  

As NASA’s Europa Clipper continues preparations in advance of its launch period — opening Oct. 10 — the mission team is assessing whether transistors on the spacecraft can withstand the intense radiation the probe will encounter at Jupiter.

These transistors are used as electrical switches in many digital electronics. The particular versions used by Europa Clipper are radiation-hardened and are intended to tolerate 100 to 300 kilorad, or krad (a “rad” is a unit of measure for absorbed dose of ionizing radiation). However, the mission team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission, is assessing test data that indicates some transistors could be affected by significantly lower radiation levels in some conditions.

The team is conducting more extensive testing to better characterize the transistor behavior and whether it may affect the functionality of the circuits on Europa Clipper. The agency has time to continue this work as the spacecraft proceeds toward its October launch period.

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[1] Url: https://blogs.nasa.gov/europaclipper/2024/05/31/nasa-examines-electrical-switches-on-europa-clipper-spacecraft/

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