James Kinnison
Johns Hopkins University/Appied Physics Laboratory
Satellite design has changed over the last decade or so. Cost, schedule and performance are now the major trade-offs which drive nearly every design decision in the course of a mission. Radiation effects engineering once meant making sure all the components used in a spacecraft worked as specified given the mission requirements - in other words, part hardness assurance. Over the last decade, the role of the radiation effects engineer has expanded to support the overall design of the spacecraft system. The way we think about radiation effects has expanded so the main concern is no longer just the behavior of the parts, but how the part behavior impacts the system as a whole and what the system needs to do to accommodate undesirable behavior. It is the behavior of a system in an environment that we are attempting to manage, not just a collection of parts, and in doing so, provide the most cost-effective, reliable system that accomplishes the mission goals.
In this talk, I will present a brief introduction to the radiation environment and effects of concern for system designers and show specific examples of how these effects are mitigated in current spacecraft programs. I will also discuss some current ideas in spacecraft research and development and discuss how systems using these ideas might be affected by radiation along with some possible mitigation strategies.
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Last Revised: January 09, 2002
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