Modernizing Space Electronics Assurance: History and Lessons

Today’s sophisticated space payloads, spacecrafts, and satellites are transforming our world; technological innovation is accelerating across multiple fronts. Despite these advancements, the space electronics community faces a critical challenge as decades-old development approaches create unsustainable constraints on mission implementation. The continued adherence to military specification (MIL-SPEC) standards has stifled innovation and increased costs despite evidence questioning their effectiveness for reliability. Since the 1995 Perry Memorandum advocated for commercial-off-the-shelf components, the space sector has largely maintained allegiance to MIL-SPEC parts under the misguided belief they offer superior reliability. This preference has resulted in significant mission losses and programmatic challenges. Case studies, including failures with M123 screened capacitors and evidence that over-testing creates failures, demonstrate how traditional approaches have become value-subtracted measures. The current electronics approach—selecting components from a limited set of “space-grade” parts with increasingly long lead times—has created a cascade of delays, increased costs, and hindered technological innovation. Engineering teams face waiting months or years for parts, directly contributing to mission overruns and cancellations. This article proposes modernizing electronics development by integrating parts engineering into the process, focusing on selecting optimal components based on performance margins rather than compliance with outdated standards. By appropriately utilizing automotive-qualified and space-enhanced plastic parts without unnecessary additional testing, missions can achieve objectives with reduced schedules and costs while supporting the latest innovations and technologies developers have to offer. Without embracing this fundamental shift, the space community risks making future missions economically and programmatically unimplementable while remaining decades behind the current capabilities in engineering and technology.