A CubeSat platform for characterizing the reliability of electronic components

Because the space environment's effect on the operation of affordable, commercially available components is not well characterized, these devices are often ignored as viable candidate parts. This paper presents the design of the Cube-Sat Reliability Experiment (CRX) platform, a 1U customizable CubeSat-compatible system built to test and validate a variety of commercial off-the-shelf electronic components through direct exposure to the space environment. The system reports measurable device under test (DUT) health and environmental characteristics to the spacecraft bus. Data comparisons between shielded and exposed DUTs indicate DUT reliability. This work discusses the CRX system architecture as well as the demonstrated prototype implementation of hardware and software designs for a MOSFET DUT. This mockup establishes the system as an effective, low-cost utility to expand the list of qualified space-ready parts by determining accurate reliabilities of COTS components.