I can't believe the manufacturer didn't alert them and they had to hear it from another customer. Surely the manufacturer wouldn't want to be named as the reason that a spacecraft orbiting Jupiter went dark due to their faulty components.
The article mentions that the defense sector discovered the issue. Rad hard defense electronics have more stringent TID (total ionizing dose) requirement than space, due to a need to survive in nuclear war scenarios. Space usually caps out at 100 krad, with some very stringent environments needing up to 300 krad. Defense can go all the way up to 1 MRad in some cases.
My guess is the parts failed TID at the more stringent levels, and Infineon didn't follow up with NASA or their contractor because they assumed that NASA was okay with the lower rad tolerance levels typical of space. Usually that would be the case, but Europa Clipper is special because it's going to an extremely harsh radiation environment.
The big question for me is: did the Europa Clipper program order a lower TID and try to upscreen, or did they order the high TID part? If it's the former, it's on NASA. If it's the latter, that's extremely concerning because Infineon should know that nobody orders expensive high TID parts for funsies, and they should have followed up with all customers as soon as they confirmed there was an issue. Just assuming NASA over-specified a part is absurd. The rad hard electronics market is small, everyone knows each other. Trust is king.
Finally, I'm not sure if it's the part in question, but it looks like Infineon discontinued their 1 MRad MOSFETs in 2020, citing low order volumes: https://irf.com/product-info/hi-rel/alerts/fv5-d-21-0004.pdf. In the light of this reporting, I have to wonder if there was more to it than that?
> and Infineon didn't follow up with NASA or their contractor because they assumed that NASA was okay with the lower rad tolerance levels typical of space
It's more likely that Infineon's folks talking to NASA were equally clueless about this change.
Ultimately, NASA bought a part with a specified TID tolerance. Any manufacturer of space qualified parts keeps detailed records of lot acceptance testing as well as who purchased from that lot. The reps interfacing with NASA didn't necessarily need to know that there was a process change, but as soon as test failures below the datasheet spec were communicated from customers and confirmed, Infineon's quality department should have immediately reached out to NASA (or more specifically NASA's contractor working on the electronics).
" Infineon's quality department should have immediately reached out to NASA (or more specifically NASA's contractor working on the electronics)."
Is there any actual evidence they didn't reach out to every single buyer of the electronics?
The article goes out of its way to say Infineon did not contact NASA. But even in your description, they would not have, they would have contacted NASA's contractor working on the electronics.
I still go back to "if there was actual evidence that Infineon did not notify who it was supposed to, the article probably would have cited it". There isn't, so they instead cast aspersions.
Instead they make a bunch of hay about a statement from Infineon that seems totally innocuous - they didn't notify people they didn't know about. Shocker.
Look, i actually hate Infineon - i've been forced to try to make their wifi and bluetooth modules work properly before ;-)
But this kind of lazy-at-best journalism doesn't help anyone.
