The rational use of plastic parts in satellites

Management of plastic encapsulated microcircuits begins and ends with a concurrent engineering effort. The effort begins with the establishment of partnerships with a handful of world-class suppliers and ends with the development, documentation, and enforcement of rigorous in-house controls regarding device handling, screening, qualification, uprating, derating and storage. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) has successfully selected, screened and qualified PEMs for multiple artificial satellite applications. We discuss the rationale on how these commercial devices can be properly qualified and applied.