I recently attended the NASA Electronic Parts & Packaging (NEPP) workshop followed by the Nuclear Space & Radiation Effects Conference (NSREC) and it became apparent to me that there are broadly two categories of electronic components that are most widely used today for space electronics.
The first category is ‘failure is not an option’ components. This is served by a limited selection of devices that are well proven workhorses (often FPGAs) with proven rad-hard credentials and solid flight history. The only downside is that these devices have a price tag of tens of thousands of dollars – sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The second category is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Many small satellites are being launched using commercial grade products, orderable overnight from the online catalog distributors. It has been argued by hobbyists that for short missions into LEO (Lower Earth Orbit), commercial grade products will probably work just fine. Sadly, a great number of these picosatellite missions are not successful.
Even though the cost of putting a picosatellite into orbit has come down significantly, it is still not a trivial amount of money. Without a doubt, the probability of success increases when components that were designed to operate in the space environment are used, rather than commercial grade parts running outside of their specification.
The VA10820 microcontroller was created to give designers a guaranteed rad-hard ARM Cortex-M0 that will operate reliably in space, at a fraction of the cost of an old-school space market FPGA. The VA10820 is now being recognized by picosatellite designers as an affordable rad-hard processor option and it is great to see new satellite designs using this MCU.
By the way, there are nine HARDSIL© enhanced die (including the VORAGO ARM Cortex-M0 based MCU) travelling to the International Space Station on the SpaceX CRS-10 mission in November.