Instrumentation for space

The primary drivers for space instruments are the environment and survivability, support assets, delivery cost, and lack of accessibility. Survivability deals primarily with environments, such as launch and depressurization, extremes of temperature, high vacuum, radiation, and hypervelocity impacts. The cost to deployment is directly coupled to launch services, which are inherently expensive. These costs are nonlinear functions of the mass and volume of satellite payloads. The "user interfaces" for space-borne instruments are high-cost assets because they include mission operations centers, satellite hacking station(s), and ground networks. All of these issues demand high reliability.