Tried and true is the battle cry of military and aerospace organizations determined to study Mars. Although emerging technologies could facilitate the journey, heritage devices with a proven track record remain the best path forward for systems that can withstand unexpected events, intense radiation, and the harsh conditions of the Red Planet.

“Customers come to us to buy the hardware and the engineering expertise that goes into predicting the performance after 15 to 18 years in space,” said Odile Ronat, director of technical marketing for the Hi Rel Business Unit of Infineon Technologies, which makes MOSFETs and ICs. “It’s not just buying hardware and part numbers but working with our partners. In the case of space exploration, there are unique and exacting requirements.”

Rough road to Mars

Getting to Mars has not been an easy journey, with only four out of 10 missions sent to the planet counted as successful, according to NASA. “First, you have the radiation on the journey to Mars,” said Ken O’Neill, director of marketing, Space and Aviation at Microsemi, a Microchip Technology company. “Avionics and flight control systems guiding the spacecraft have to survive the trip from Earth to Mars, and then once you are in orbit around Mars there is a magnetic field and it behaves a lot like Earth. You are picking up a lot of radiation. On the planet itself, it is a bit harsher than on earth. Radiation is always a problem.”

The thin atmosphere of Mars (just one percent of Earth’s) along with high levels of radiation make the destination difficult. Only the United States has launched a mission that survived a Mars landing. Since 1965, NASA has flown by, orbited, landed on, and roved the surface of Mars.

On May 5, 2018, NASA launched its InSight Mission which is scheduled to touch down on Mars on Nov. 26, a little before 3 p.m. EST. The landing site at Elysium Planitia is sometimes called “the biggest parking lot on Mars.” The Insight design was based upon the Phoenix spacecraft, also built by Lockheed Martin Space, which landed at Mars’ North Pole in 2008.

llustration showing a simulated view of NASA's InSight lander about to land on the surface of Mars. This view shows the underside of the spacecraft. Photo courtesy: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Space exploration requires resistance to the one-two punch of high radiation and Single Event Effect (SEE) problems. Eli Kawam, manager, Product and Business Development, Aerospace & Defense Product Group at Microchip Technology offered an illustration:

Think about a beach umbrella sitting in the sun. If it sits in the sun long enough, it will be grayed by the effects of the sun. That degradation is equivalent to the Total Ionizing Dose (TID). A single event might be a hail storm hitting the umbrella—think of it as microscopic hail particles hitting it at high speed. You can shield from TID but there’s not shielding the system from the storm. You have to design the equipment to be tolerant of the effects of it.

Heritage of hardnesss

Radiation-hardened metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) have a track record of tolerating radiation. “There’s a pretty good knowledge base today about the radiation environment on Mars,” said Ronat. “In the case of the Mars Rover, the electronics in there have survived for 14 years and we are still making those products or versions of those products that withstand radiation even better. That’s why the industry works so much on heritage.”