Commercial Off-the-Shelf Components in Space Applications

Space applications have special requirements due to the particular environment into which they are deployed. Space is a particularly harsh environment for electronic components, because it poses several threats to normal functioning and lifetime duration of electronics deployed in spacecraft. In this chapter, we offer an overview of the problems introduced by radiations and of the solutions developed so far. Then we present a case study in which several such solutions have been implemented in a space-worthy system. The architecture we propose was developed in the framework of the ESA HiRel Programme and has been selected as part of the third generation Meteosat to be launched in 2018. The system described so far was validated by means of fault injection campaigns. A software based fault injection system was used. Results gathered in these experiments show that the system is suitable for operations in space radiation environment.