In today’s Space industry there is an increasing drive to introduce the use of COTS components, both as mission enablers and for cost reduction purposes, without affecting the mission’s reliability figures. SENER Aeroespacial has a long heritage in the Defence industry, where COTS are used extensively. We are currently in the process of transposing some of the knowledge acquired in that area to our Space business, in terms of COTS selection criteria and design rules for high reliability and long service life, among others. In this presentation we will highlight the main challenges we are facing in this process as well as some of the lessons learned associated with COTS usage for our ongoing Space projects.

New Space doesn’t simply means accepting the use of COTS components into a specific application. It means lowering the costs, being agile, use of new technologies, gain efficiency, … In order to accomplish with the market demands, things must be done in a different way. Alter Technology through its platform doEEEt.com introduces the crowd sourcing concept applied to the testing on EEE parts. The Crowdtesting platform is a collaborative project where actors WW will be able to create consortiums devoted to evaluate different technologies and sharing the costs.

The space industry needs to address varying challenges in different markets that have the same structure and teams. In addition to more traditional Class I and Class II projects driven by Geospace (GEO) operators and space agencies, there is more demand for alternative solutions that provide significant cost reductions and better time to market for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations and space exploration vehicles (i.e. launchers, rovers, robots). COTS solutions are increasingly used in these applications to address this new trend, but they bring concerns in regards to orbit evolution, mission duration and changing customer requirements.

The electronic content of satellites is expanding exponentially in both traditional GEO satellite signal processing applications as well as LEO small satellite constellations that will provide internet access from any point on the planet. These new ambitious design solutions require reduced size, weight, power and cost. The benefits of using Plastic Encapsulated Microcircuits (PEMs) or Commercial-Off-The-Shelf devices (COTS) in space level applications are attractive: advanced technologies, higher levels of integration, higher performance, better size, weight, and power specifications. Design engineers in the space industry are tasked with using risk analysis to reduce cost while increasing performance and maintaining system reliability. A given device might be suitable for use in space, but not in all space level applications. The components selected must meet the specific mission requirements. The challenge today is how to implement COTS methodology in space level applications. The goal is to reach an acceptable level of reliability, within the technical, commercial, and financial constraints of the mission. Unfortunately, depending on the specific mission requirements, there are an endless number of possibilities for screening and quality conformance inspections.

The generic ESCC specification ESCC3501 defines the qualification procedure for quartz crystals use in “classical” space applications. The cost for crystals manufactured along this specification is very high and lead times are long. It limits the availability and the variety of available packages, namely with regard to small SMD packages. Furthermore, many classical space crystal spec requests to use swept quartz material for improved radiation hardness, which is a heavy cost driver. In our paper we will compare the performance of swept quartz vs. unswept modern quartz material. We will present procedures for up-screening of COTS-crystals at different screening levels, depending on the application and acceptable cost.

This paper presents a survey of a number of commercial devices that have been tested for radiation, both Total Ionizing Dose and Single Event Effects. The results presented here will show that choosing power management devices that are intended to operate in a high radiation environment can be challenging. Renesas will also outline how it can serve the power management market with lower cost, radiation characterized devices that are ideal for New Space applications. These devices bridge the challenges of providing higher reliability and radiation assurance, while still being sensitive to the costs of small satellites and large constellations.

Some COTS suppliers can propose tin lead finish, but most of them comply with RoHS, meaning Pb-free finishes. In this presentation, several aspects of the lead-free terminations will be addressed. First, the finish selection will be presented, taking into account the compatibility with the current SnPb mounting process and also with a future lead-free mounting process. That includes some specific points to be detailed, like lead-frame materials, balls, under-layers, finish materials… Most of the COTS have 100% tin finish, so the pure tin management will be part of this presentation: in term of termination selection, whisker-free guaranty and alternative mitigation will be discussed.