Avionics

A parts database of components selected, qualified, or flown by planetary and orbital robotics programs, each with the citation that establishes it. The purpose is reuse: a designer choosing a processor, motor, encoder, sensor, or FPGA can see what has already been through a space qualification campaign and what the campaign found. A component with no published flight or qualification result is not listed.

Where the part-level record now reaches

Batteries, power electronics and inertial sensors each carry at least one published part-level result. The lithium-ion cell behind the Mars Exploration Rover battery has a JPL qualification campaign [5], and heavy-ion burnout and latchup results exist for GaN and silicon power devices [6]; both are on Power and Batteries. A commercial MEMS accelerometer has a heavy-ion latchup screen whose cross-section moves with temperature [7], on Sensors and IMUs.

Several further named parts in those classes carry a performance figure but no qualification campaign, and they are listed as such on their pages. A NASA COMPASS design study assumes a Saft VES16 cell for a Venus orbiter battery at 90 percent maximum depth of discharge, alongside a TERMA power equipment box with BCDU and ARU cards [1]; the cell was an assumption in a study and the vehicle did not fly. The one named motor controller is the Elmo Motion Control G-Sol WHI20/100, closing position and velocity loops directly off the actuator feedback sensors on the RASSOR 2.0 ground prototype [2]. SPHERES uses three Honeywell QA-T160 single-axis accelerometers, quoted at better than 5 micro-g resolution, and three BEI Gyrochip II rate gyros from Systron Donner measuring to plus or minus 50 degrees per second on a vibrating quartz tuning fork element [4]. The later SPHERES documentation reproduces Honeywell QA-750 and QA-75C datasheets in its appendices [3], which are vendor material rather than a qualification record. RASSOR 2.0 carries an Xsens MTI-30-2A5G4-O [2]. No star tracker flown on a planetary robot is published down to a part number.

Radios, transponders and antennas carry part-level results of their own, on Radios and Antennas, together with the radio-frequency and data interface parts screened at a named beam. Three results there are part-level: a Ka-band deployable antenna whose flight-model gain was measured after deployment, after vibration and after thermal vacuum; a rover UHF radio measured at the box level in a system thermal vacuum test; and laboratory receiver sensitivity thresholds for the Ingenuity to Perseverance link.