space electronics – Spirit Electronics

Spirit Receives Supplier Excellence Award at the 2024 Honeywell Space Supplier Summit

Daniel Rowan and Travis Ireland accept the Supplier Excellence Award at the Honeywell Space Supplier Summit 2024

Spirit Electronics received the Supplier Excellence Award at the Honeywell Space Supplier Summit this month. This annual event recognizes and celebrates outstanding contributions from Honeywell’s suppliers who have consistently demonstrated excellence.

Account Representative Daniel Rowan and Purchasing Coordinator Travis Ireland accepted the award on behalf of Team Spirit. “This award is testament to the team’s unwavering commitment to innovation, quality, and customer service,” says Spirit CEO Marti McCurdy.

Spirit is able to offer responsive and agile customer service to customers like Honeywell because of the dedicated team support and streamlined end-to-end supply chain services. This past year, Spirit added automated real-time reporting for order management and supply chain transparency. Customers are able to monitor the status of orders and expected ship dates with these updates from Spirit’s AI A.L.I.C.E. (Automated Logistics Informative Custom Export). Not only does the tool keep customers informed, but it allows Spirit’s team to achieve award-winning on-time-delivery performance.

Spirit supports customers in the aerospace and defense supply chain with authorized distribution and a range of test and assembly services that include MIL-STD-883 testing, circuit card assembly and device analysis. We monitor both on-time-delivery and lot-acceptance rates to achieve customer satisfaction and product quality and safety.

Honeywell Aerospace Technologies supports commercial space, space agencies, and defense programs. The company’s accomplishments include products in avionics, systems, and assemblies for aircraft, small satellites, and recent NASA missions. Approximately 80% of satellites in orbit have Honeywell on board.

Congratulations to Daniel, Travis, and the Spirit team on your well-deserved award.

MilesTek Vacuum-Rated Cable Assemblies for Space Applications @ Spirit Electronics

MilesTek TVAC Cable Assemblies Vacuum-Rated Space

A satellite orbiting Earth every 90 seconds cycles from extreme heat to extreme cold temperatures over and over. Whether you’re building a satellite for low-Earth orbit or an assembly for deeper space missions, temperatures, radiation, and the environmental vacuum of space pose unique challenges to electronic assemblies.

MilesTek has designed and produced a range of vacuum-rated cable assemblies tested and qualified to perform in this exact harsh space environment. With the fast-paced shift to commercial and New Space programs, cost-effective assemblies ready to perform in space aren’t just for NASA anymore.

Outgassing and Vacuum Testing

MilesTek made its vacuum-rated cable assemblies with NASA and space applications in mind. The assembly materials must pass testing and meet long-standing requirements for outgassing and total mass loss before they are launched on a satellite.

As with other components, the loss of air pressure in the vacuum of space combined with extremely high and low temperatures can force small amounts of gas out of component materials. Even small amounts of gas in that environment can condense on sensors, lenses, and mirrors to impair visibility or performance.

To prevent outgassing, MilesTek tests its cable assemblies in a thermal vacuum chamber. After cycling the materials through extreme temperatures and vacuum conditions, total mass loss (TMP) measurements are made. Cable assemblies must meet NASA requirements for both outgassing and TML to be considered vacuum-rated. These assemblies perform in temperatures from -55° C to 200°C.

The Full Assembly: Cables, Jackets, and Connectors

As a vacuum-rated cable assembly, every part must be capable of supporting performance. MilesTek’s assemblies include the cable, with special jacketing, and the connector.

For mil-aero applications, MilesTek cables use a twinaxial design with an impedance of 78 ohms. The cable is protected by a UV-resistant PFA jacket to achieve the extreme temperature performance. MilesTek offers four different connector options that use bayonet and threaded mounts to keep cables connected through shock and vibration.

Delivering to Meet the Pace of Space

With new commercial and low-Earth orbit space and new space programs competing for launch schedules, we hear from our customers about the challenges of keeping up with production pace. Current supply chain demands are also pushing out lead times for other space components. But MilesTek’s production model makes sure cable assemblies are in stock and ready for same-day shipping.

Spirit Electronics is MilesTek’s only authorized U.S. distribution partner. With access to MilesTek stock and the ability to manage your component pipeline ahead of your production demands, Spirit can deliver vacuum-rated cable assemblies along with your full bill of materials. For more interconnect products available through Spirit Electronics, download the MilesTek product catalog.

cable connector MilesTek New Space outgassing space electronics Vacuum-rated

TI Space Enhanced Plastic Rad-Tolerant Products Offer Ready-to-Use Space-Grade Solution

TI Space EP @ Spirit rad-tolerant space grade for New Space applications

A new space race is taking off, and Texas Instruments’ space-grade rad-tolerant Space Enhanced Plastics (Space EP) line is positioned to meet New Space mission needs. With private and commercial companies launching space programs and satellite constellations that build on decades of NASA experience, design, and range, we are seeing our customers’ launch schedules and builds pick up speed.

Unlike the deep space missions of the past, our customers are innovating New Space applications for low Earth orbit (LEO) with shorter mission life. But with the influx of innovation comes tight launch schedules and competitive component markets. Customers are weighing decisions to cut production costs and explore commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) alternatives to space-grade components.

New Space Program Risks and Challenges

Spirit’s new test lab and value-added screening services come with decades of experience in radiation and QMLV testing. We know upscreening COTS components poses a significant failure risk. Component failures can delay build and launch schedules, add significant cost to replace parts or even cause full mission failure if a satellite fails in orbit.

This is where TI’s Space Enhanced Plastics line offers a ready-to-use option for reliable space-grade performance. TI already has extensive QMLV product expertise and knows that New Space demands performance while also keeping production competitive, agile, and fast. TI Space EP products mitigate the risk and meet New Space mission goals. You don’t have to sacrifice reliability to meet budget.

Qualified and Reliable Space-Grade Screening

TI Space EP products come with radiation screening, thermal cycling and outgassing right out of the box. There is no need to perform any additional screening. Because TI performs all screening as the OEM, your components arrive with lot data and documentation with full traceability.

In LEO applications, components quickly cycle from hot to cold environments as they orbit the Earth. TI’s parametric testing is performed at room and high temperatures with guard banding for cold temperatures. Products come with 100% temperature cycle characterized to the military temperature range of -55° to over 125°.

Outgassing is performed to ASTM E595, which is essential for plastic packaging that introduces organic compounds. In a space environment, these compounds have the potential to outgas and negatively impact component performance. This is especially true in optics where condensation can obscure lenses and affect sensors.

Plastic Packaging and Material Quality in Space

Plastic packaging offers significant advantages in New Space. Instead of hermetically sealed ceramic, plastic allows more design options and smaller sizing. Plastic reduces product costs without compromising performance. In fact, in our recent podcast interview with TI, GM Gary Reichmuth explained that plastic improves performance because it doesn’t have degradation due to the parasitic loss associated with ceramic packaging.

Plastic isn’t the only material advantage in Space EP products. TI uses gold bond wire to avoid the risks of copper wire. And while pure tin is common in COTS parts, TI Space EP uses less than 97% tin terminations and internal materials to mitigate the risk of whiskering in harsh space environments.

TI Space EP production uses one wafer fab, assembly site, and material set to offer the best control and traceability of materials. While avoiding the variations possible with multiple fabs and sources, this control also allows TI to perform radiation lot acceptance testing on every wafer lot.

Radiation Characterization and Rad-Tolerant Solutions

While radiation hardening is a hallmark in high-reliability, this can add significant expense to any space-grade component. But rather than compromise reliability, TI’s Space EP line considers the shorter mission life span and lower cumulative radiation environment of LEO missions. The result is radiation-tolerant products, characterized with radiation lot acceptance testing (RLAT) to 20 krad. TI tests both the total ionizing dose as well as single event latch up to 43 MeV.

In TI’s experience, radiation performance can vary from lot to lot but also from wafer to wafer inside a lot. TI performs radiation characterization across each lot to avoid this variation, further reducing failure risks. In comparison, COTS products and other manufacturers may only trace back to the wafer lot.

Products in the Space EP Line

The Space EP product family currently includes

data converters, power devices, comparators, transceivers, digital isolators, current sense amplifiers, RF synthesizers, linear and low-dropout regulators and supervisors. New space-grade products are expected to release in the next 12-18 months, offering an even wider variety of plastic options available to the New Space industry.

TI Space EP @ Spirit Electronics: TI's Only Authorized SDB Reseller

Spirit is uniquely positioned as TI’s only authorized SDB reseller, and we offer award-winning experience managing full BOM, logistics, and program support for LEO space programs. For agile production and build timelines, we can manage your component pipeline to make sure you launch on time and meet your mission goals. TI’s Space EP rad-tolerant products are reliable and high quality out of the box, and Spirit can get that box to you.

LEO low Earth orbit New Space radiation-tolerant space electronics Space EP space grade TI

Radiation Tolerance for Space

Spirit Electronics is featured in an article about high-performance, radiation tolerant electronics for space in this month’s issue of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine. Editor John Keller explores options for balancing costs, capability, size, weight and power consumption for new space designs:

“Among the approaches for producing space electronics components that blend affordability and capability is screening and testing to uncover those commercial grade-parts that can withstand space radiation on their own, as well as making some enhancements to electronics that testing identifies as already radiation tolerant.”

Marti McCurdy, Spirit’s CEO, addresses test and value-add services that provide reliable yet affordable components.

“‘We are on the test side, and can upscreen or do any value-add for the customer,’ says Marti McCurdy, owner and CEO of Spirit Electronics in Phoenix. ‘We offer a high-value proposition, and only operate in the mil-aero sector.'”

Read the full article.

"In the test world, we are starting to move away from component-level and into the systems world... The commercial world has been in this area for a few years now, and the aerospace and defense market is just getting there now."

Marti McCurdy Tweet

radiation-tolerant space electronics upscreening electronics

Tag: space electronics