PRESENTATION

Packaging Reliability for Space and High Reliability Environments

The space sector is becoming increasingly competitive, with continuous demands for higher performance and lower overall costs from mission inception through to end-of-life decommissioning. These pressures influence all levels of system development, including the selection and procurement of individual components and subsystems. In parallel with this trend, electrical, electronic, and photonics components originally designed for terrestrial applications—such as those used in the automotive and telecommunications sectors—have demonstrated high reliability when manufactured in large volumes and qualified under established industrial standards (e.g., AEC-Q automotive qualification standards). The use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components offers many advantages for space and similar high-reliability applications, most notably improved availability, reduced cost, and high performance. However, concerns remain regarding the long-term reliability of these components when operating in the harsh conditions of the space environment. This presentation reports on the results of detailed reliability evaluations performed on families of electronic and photonics COTS components by Tyndall National Institute under several contracts with the European Space Agency. The results demonstrate promising performance for certain component types—particularly automotive electronics—while also indicating that further manufacturing improvements and increased standardisation are required for others.