Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) Technology Integration into Microspacecraft

The need to significantly reduce the mass, power, and volume of future scientific spacecraft has resulted in an increased interest on the part of NASA in the relatively new technology of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). In addition to being light, compact and low-power-consuming, MEMS technology offers other advantages to space applications. Chief among these are robust performance with solid-state reliability. In addition, the ability to array many identical MEMS devices allows for very large scale integration (VLSI), fault tolerant, and distributed architectures. These micromachined, chip-level systems have been in the research stage for over a decade and are currently being developed commercially as such terrestrial applications as automotive and biomedical sensors. Although MEMS technology is promising for space applications, it is relatively immature at this stage. Much work still needs to be done to take MEMS devices from the laboratory to the space environment. While space applications can leverage from the progress achieved by other industries, additional technical work is required to make these devices flight ready. This work includes consideration of such issues as space performance, survivability, and operation as well as space architectures and flight qualification methodologies. This paper identifies the issues that, when resolved, would enable the incorporation of MEMS into space systems. It also describes various Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and JPL-funded activities addressing these issues.