Ibadan, 7 January 2025. – ASTRIONICS GmbH, as member of DKE (the German Commission for Electrical Engineering, Electronics, and IT), a regulatory and safety organization, is proposing guidelines for handling radiation-sensitive electronics and Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) parts during border export and import control processes, where radioactive equipment such as x-rays and neutron exposure is used.
Dr Michael Schlueter, CEO of ASTRIONICS, explained, “Components are speculatively transported between warehouses worldwide and are increasingly scanned due to international terrorist tensions. Thus, these new components are potentially pre-exposed to radiation doses of up to 0.5 krad[Si], which could be an unnoticed cause of failure in some COTS components that are sensitive to less than 10 krad[Si] and could experience performance degradation.”
The CEO added, “This is a major concern not only in the so-called NewSpace industry, which is largely COTS-based, but also in the aerospace industry in general, as more highly integrated, and therefore much more radiation-sensitive, electronic components are used in significant quantities. This is also the case in Industry 4.0 and the automotive industry, as more electronics are used in autonomous processes, robots and driving.”
As a result, the initiative, “Guidelines for Safe Handling of Radiation-Sensitive Electronic Devices” intends to identify and categorize the various potential radiation effects of different electronic technologies (e.g. CMOS, MOSFETs, Bipolar, etc.) and ensure quality and full performance during exposure to ionizing radiation during transport.
Astrionics believes that despite the initiative’s importance to NewSpace, its success will require the participation of the stakeholders: space agencies, industry across systems integration, manufacturing, and the entire electronics-related supply chain. The intended outcome includes datasheets and procedures that specify minimum acceptable ionization dose levels, i.e., 0.5 krad[Si], for the careful handling of COTS worldwide.
