Where do you get space rated components

Actually, there are a lot of Digikey components in space.

Start by checking with the regular distributors and factory reps: Avnet, Arrow, and whoever else you can dig up. Digi-Key sells common stuff: uncommon stuff has to come from bigger distributors, or if the overall production volumes are low enough straight from the factory through a rep.

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www.wescottdesign.com

A 'net search on "space rated electronics" seems to turn up a few likely spots to check. One would probably be wise to know what NASA and/or MIL specs would be applicable for particular component or assembly families. Also, the part of "space" that is being targeted: high-altitude balloon, LEO, inter-planetary, extra-system? Flight duration? Consequences of failure? Budget?

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

Most components used in various space ventures are procured to a spec written for them. Get tested and inspected to death and have a high price tag as a result. However you may be able to buy stuff made on the same assembly line without all the testing. An example is Sprague vitamin q capacitors.

Dan

Flight heritage is king in space applications, especially for the old school type of application, and for outside of LEO.

Depending on orbit and radiation environment, what do you actually need ?

Of course, anything going into the vacuum, you have to check for the outgassing performance.

Heat dissipation is a critical issue with no convection, so everything has to be cooled with radiation only.

Radiation tolerance is critical with anything going through the van Allen radiation belts (GTO and GO).

Radio amateurs in AMSAT

have been quite successful in using more or less off the shelf semiconductors for the LEO and GTO orbits. Some COTS electronics works a few days, some other may survive

5-20 years in GTO with four passes through the van Allen belt each day.

Yup. You supply the spec to a vendor and ask for a quote.

...and when the subsystems fail and need repair, as CBS News' "60 Minutes" showed on their segment years ago about the MX missile's guidance system, you run down to the local Radio Shack and buy stuff.

We are in the process of listing many classic mil spec integrated circuits to our website at "less than plastic" prices.

These typically vary from outrageously expensive to pure unobtanium, and are likely to get much more so. Because most manufacturers have or will shortly discontinue them.

Owing to a miniscule market and ROHS issues.

< >

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Many thanks,

Don Lancaster                          voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics   3860 West First Street   Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml   email: don@tinaja.com

Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com

That's "Tandy Aerospace" to you, bub.

--
www.wescottdesign.com

Pretty dopey to consistently NOT capitalize 'van' and only capitalize 'Allen'.

They are the Van Allen Radiation Belts

Look up:

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Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
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Beware the lollipop of mediocrity. Lick it once and you'll suck forever.
        -- Brian Wilson

If you are clueless about it, you are not exactly a 'space rated' device designer kind of thing.

An I triple E member and you do not know how to source such a thing?

The world has indeed changed.

Depends on whether it is a first name, as in "Van Johnson", or a Dutch last name prefix, as in "Rembrandt van Rijn"

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence 
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
                                       (Richard Feynman)

In the dark ages, rad hard stuff just got run on epi wafers. Sure, lots of extra testing, but the process wasn't all that different except for the epi wafer. But now due to latchup and other concerns, everything is on epi or even insulator these days, so you get some rad hardness for free.

Wrong again. It depends on whether you include the first name or not:

Mr. Van Rijn

or

Mr. Rembrandt van Rijn

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
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I have lots of electronics here at CERN that gets exposed to radiation, with dose rates up to several tens of kGy/yr.

I have little knowledge of the details of IC processes, but my experience is that the old stuff was definitely more rad-hard than modern circuitry. (Except perhaps for chips with lateral PNP transistors, which won't even survive

10Gy.)

Jeroen Belleman

I defer to your evidently superior knowledge of your native language.

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence 
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
                                       (Richard Feynman)

or van/von/af/av Dutch/German/Sweedish.

Just another variant of "...son", or "from" depending on the language. ...Jim Thompson

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                  [On the Road, in New York]

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