40 Years of Radiation Single Event Effects at the European Space Agency, ESTEC

1816 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NUCLEAR SCIENCE, VOL. 60, NO. 3, JUNE 2013

40 Years of Radiation Single Event Effects at theEuropean Space Agency, ESTEC

Reno Harboe-Sørensen

Abstract—This summary paper is based on an invited talk givenat the Single Event Effects (SEE) Symposium at La Jolla, Cali-fornia, USA on 12 April 2011, titled ’40 Years of SEE at ESA/ESTEC’ (European Space Agency/European Space Research andTechnology Centre). As an historical summary paper covering ra-diation activities within the ESTEC Components Laboratory, thispaper primarily focus on my own SEE experiences and involve-ment from 1970 to 2010.

Index Terms—Hardness assurance, radiation experiment, radi-ation monitor, SEU/SEL, Single Event Effects, SRAMs, technologydemonstration.

I. INTRODUCTION

I N this paper, the general activities of the ESTEC Compo-nents Laboratory will be covered very briefly even though

component radiation issues first became significant towards theend of the 1970s. Component SEE problems also started to ap-pear around that time and the ESTEC Component Laboratorywas involved fairly early in studies and testing. Since then, com-ponent technology has moved towards higher complexity andsmaller feature sizes, which contributed to SEE problems neverimagined. So, in addition to the ESA/ESTEC historical sum-mary of SEE activities covering the earlier years, this paper willstart with a short introduction to ESA and the ESTEC Com-ponents Laboratory. SEE activities will be described from the1980s followed by the setup of test facilities and the need for aReference SEE Monitor. Finally, the Technology Demonstra-tion Module (TDM), currently being flown on PROBA-II tomonitor radiation effects in advanced semiconductor devices,will be highlighted before presenting a few examples of space-craft anomalies caused by SEE.

II. EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY

European cooperative space research started with the creationof the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO)on 29th February 1964 by seven member states. The EuropeanSpace Research Organisation (ESRO) was created three weekslater on 20th March 1964 by ten member states. These two indi-vidual organizations were later merged together as the EuropeanSpace Agency (ESA).

Manuscript received June 15, 2012; revised December 27, 2012; acceptedFebruary 12, 2013. Date of publication March 21, 2013; date of current versionJune 12, 2013.R. Harboe-Sørensen was with ESA/ESTEC, 2215 BE Voorhout, The Nether-

lands (e-mail: [email protected]).Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online

at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TNS.2013.2247630

The European Space Agency was formed on 30th May 1975by ten member states. By 2012, ESA had twenty member states:Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France,Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands,Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzer-land and the United Kingdom. The Agency’s policy-makingbody is the ESA Council, composed of representatives from themember states. Canada also sits on the Council and takes partin some projects under a Cooperation Agreement. Hungary, Es-tonia and Slovenia are participating in the Plan for EuropeanCooperating States (PECS), while other countries are in negotia-tion with ESA about joining this initiative. ESA’s annual budgetin 2012 was billion covering mandatory (25%) and op-tional (75%) space programs. ESA’s purpose is ’to provide for,and to promote, for exclusively peaceful purposes, cooperationamong European States in space research and technology andtheir space applications, with a view to their being used for sci-entific purposes and for operational space applications systems.ESA’s main establishments are widely distributed among the

member states with:— ESA Headquarters in Paris, France— ESTEC (European Space Research and TechnologyCentre) in Noordwijk, The Netherlands

— ESOC (European Space Operations Centre) in Darmstadt,Germany

— ESRIN (European Space Research Institute) in Frascati,Italy – (ESA Centre for Earth Observation).

— EAC (European Astronaut Centre) in Cologne, Germany— ESAC (European Space Astronomy Centre) near Madrid,Spain

— CSG (Guiana Space Centre) in Kourou, Fr-Guiana— ESTRACK (ESA Tracking Station Network) –10 stationsin seven countries

III. ESTEC COMPONENTS LABORATORY

The ESTEC Components Laboratory started in Delft, TheNetherlands, around 1965 with the primary aim of investigatingthe effects of the space environment on electronic components.As a subsidiary activity, some failure analysis was performed forthe ESRO I and HEOS I projects. This activity became so im-portant that around 1968, when ESTEC was moved from Delftto Noordwijk, failure analysis of components became the mainwork of the laboratory. With this change of emphasis also camethe recognition that destructive physical analysis and construc-tion analysis of components could lead to much improved pro-curement and qualification procedures. So, in the late 1960s andearly 1970s, the laboratory expanded both facilities and staffing

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HARBOE-SØRENSEN: 40 YEARS OF RADIATION SINGLE EVENT EFFECTS AT THE EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY, ESTEC 1817

Fig. 1. X-Ray control system with test chamber to the right.

to cope with the large increase in work-load resulting from thesenew activities.The laboratory was one of the first to recognize the poten-

tial of the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and installedone of the first commercial models of this instrument in 1969.Since that time, SEM and related techniques, such as X-ray anal-ysis, became major features of laboratory activity. Novel tech-niques developed on the SEM included dynamic voltage con-trast (DVC) and electron beam induced conductivity (EBIC)whereby a device can be microscopically observed while underelectrical operation.As part of a Danish team, I came to ESTEC in June 1970 and

started working at the laboratory which was part of the Com-ponent Section of the Product Assurance Division. Soon I be-came responsible for the SEM activities and was one of the mainplayers in developing the above-mentioned techniques.The X-Ray system, a Philips 150 keV machine as shown

in Fig. 1, was later used extensively for Total Ionizing Dose(TID) testing. It was a safe and simple system to use with no re-quirement for personal dosimetry. However, one of the biggestdrawbacks was a complex calibration set-up, which needed totake too many parameters into consideration. Even though aconsiderable amount of project TID testing took place outsideESTEC, using Co-60 gamma ray sources, a fair amount of re-search still took place internally using the X-Ray system. Here,Len Adams and Ian Thomson were the main researchers pro-ducing a wide range of publications [1]. The X-Ray system wasfinally scrapped in 1988 as it could not be moved to a new lab-oratory location. Fortunately, this new laboratory location alsoincluded a new collimated Co-60 gamma cell (initial 2000 Ci).Towards the end of the 1970s, the laboratory had two Cam-

bridge SEMs, an S600 system and the big S180. As shownin Fig. 2, the S180 was a powerful variable 60 keV machineupgraded with an advanced Energy Dispersive Analysis byX-Ray (EDAX) system and a Secondary Ion Mass Spectrom-eter (SIMS). This setup was one of the key pieces of equipmentused when performing failure analyses of semiconductors. Anexample of an EBIC failure analysis performed on a leaky3C91 optocoupler can be seen in Fig. 3. Here the EBIC signal(the bright line) is superimposed upon the normal secondary

Fig. 2. Cambridge S180 with EDAX and SIMS.

Fig. 3. SEM EBIC Optocoupler failure analysis.

Fig. 4. SEM Voltage contrast of Hex Inverter.

image, revealing a very uneven junction which should havebeen straight and close to the top of the die and not coveredby epoxy. The second example shown in Fig. 4 is also froma failure analysis but this time a Hex Inverting Buffer. Heredynamic voltage contrast was used (candy stripes) to revealwhere the signal stopped in one of the faulty inverters. At thattime many different component types were analyzed under op-erating conditions in the SEM and several of these techniqueswere published at the Advanced Testing and Failure Analysis(ATFA) symposium in Los Angeles, USA [2]. In fact, myradiation career started here, as CMOS devices often died infront of my nose while performing EBIC or DVC experiments.I needed to keep constant track of the electron dose depositedand quickly learned how to minimize radiation effects.


Fig. 5. One of the first CASE system used (1981).

IV. RADIATION SEE ACTIVITIES

Radiation effects have always been an important laboratoryactivity in my experience and towards the 1980s they increasedin task importance due to the development of semiconductortechnologies. Most devices were generally very sensitive toionizing radiation and a new phenomenon of upsets in micro-electronic devices due to individual cosmic rays started to causeconcern. Cosmic ray effects are of importance in technologiesusing very small geometries where the impact of a heavy ioncan produce sufficient localized ionization as to cause an upsetin a single cell or transistor. Both types of radiation effectsinvolved the laboratory, not only in straightforward testing,but also in a range of related studies necessary to ensure validtesting and good understanding of the phenomena encountered.These related studies included dosimetry, accelerator andsimulation sources, flight experiments for on-orbit dose mea-surement and computer prediction techniques. A noteworthyachievement was the development, in cooperation with AEREHarwell, UK, of a simple piece of test equipment using a smallradioactive source as an alternative to a cyclotron acceleratorfor the simulation of cosmic rays. This laboratory setup, basedon a Californium-252 source and a small vacuum chamber,see Fig. 5, was presented for the first time at NSREC in 1983[3]. In the same paper, the Harwell Variable Energy Cyclotron(VEC) was also presented together with a fair amount of SingleEvent Upset (SEU) and Single Event Latch-up (SEL) crosssection data on various 4 K-bit CMOS Static Random AccessMemories (RAMs) and Programmable Read Only Memories(PROMs). Following a second test at the VEC, the facilitypartially closed down and became unavailable for further heavyion SEE work.Heavy-ion induced latch-up, in commercial CMOS PROMs

and SRAMs, was examined in detail using the CASE system(Californium-252 Assessment of Single-event Effects) as de-scribed in the NSREC 1984 paper [4]. In a second paper thatyear [5], a comparison was made between data obtained atthe ALICE cyclotron and Californium-252. Collaboration hadstarted the year before with CNES (A. Baiget and A. Labarthe)

on the usage of the ALICE Cyclotron (Prof. R. Bimbot),Orsay/Paris, France. The first CNES/ESA test campaign atALICE took place in October 1983. In addition to CNES par-ticipation, P. Gauthier fromMatra-Harris, Dr. J. H. Stephen andT. K. Sanderson from AERE Harwell and R. Harboe-Sørensenwere involved as well. Following a second CNES/ESA testcampaign at ALICE in May 1985, the ALICE cyclotron wasclosed down and not used again for heavy ion work.At NSREC 1985 [6], an experimental study of the effect of

absorbers on the LET of Cf-252 was presented and other re-searchers like J. T. Blandford and J. C. Pickel presented furtherassessment of the usage of Cf-252 to determine parameters forSEU rate calculations [7].Towards the end of 1985, a large number of microproces-

sors were tested using CASE and heavy ions at the Harwell7 MeV Tandem Electrostatic Generator with chlorine, oxygen,carbon and lithium ions. Test and monitoring of these deviceswas performed using single board computers (SBC) with the de-vice under test in a self-test mode. Results from these tests wereused in an integrated approach providing a project risk assess-ment (ERS-1). This SEU risk assessment approach of Z80A,8086 and 80C86 microprocessors was presented at NSREC in1986 [8]. Some discrepancies between ESA and JPL 80C86 data[9] resulted in a cooperative JPL/ESA test and study programduring which SEU testing was carried out at the same facility.This was conveniently conducted after the 1986 NSREC, whenboth groups tested the same 80C86 device using the JPL testsystem and the ESA test system. These tests took place at theBrookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Long Island, USA,using the 15 MeV Tandem accelerator under the managementof Dr. P. Thieburger. Following these tests and by getting abetter understanding of the differences in test coverage, bothDon Nickels and Bill Price of JPL agreed that we got identicalSEU cross section results.Early in 1986, in support of the Saab Space On-Board Com-

puter (OBC), ESTEC started a large radiation screening andtesting program on 2901/2909 microprocessors (4-bit slice). Inaddition to CASE testing at ESTEC, the test group also visitedC.E.A. Bruyeres-le-Chatel, France, run by Dr. Claude Philis,and used their 7 MeV Tandem Van de Graaff for testing. DuringaMay 1986meeting at C.E.A., we also contacted Prof.W. Hein-rich, University of Siegen, Germany, who at that time was a wellknown expert on measurements of LET spectra in space (fromthe Apollo programme).Also in 1986, the INMOS Transputer radiation evaluation

program started. This was a 32-bit processor, intended for spaceusage. This activity and a combined SEU CASE/low dose rateCo-60 paper were presented at NSREC 1987 [10], [11]. Duringa TID/SEE facility visit to the Berlin Hahn-Meitner Institut(HMI), organized by Dr. D. Bräuning and Dr. F. Wulf, I came incontact with Prof. F. Gliem and Prof. M. Gärtner, at the Instituteof Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Tech-nical University of Braunschweig, Germany. This contact withIDA initiated a long-lasting ESA/IDA collaborative workingrelationship which continued even after my retirement fromESA in 2009. In addition to a SEE study contract with SurreySatellite Technology (SST), U.K., to study SEUs on-boardthe UoSAT-2 satellites’ OBC with Dr. C. Underwood, the


Fig. 6. UoSAT-2 OBC orbital SEU locations.

year ended with additional radiation study contracts for boththe University of Siegen and University of Braunschweig,Germany.In 1988, ESA continued to collaborate with CNES and

started using their new 15 MeV Tandem Van de Graaff, at IPN,Orsay, France. The Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL),Berkeley, USA, 88-inch cyclotron was used for memories and80386/68000 microprocessors for the Columbus programme.The GANIL (Grand Accelerateur National D’Ions Lourds)Cyclotron, Caen, France, as well as the GSI (Gesellschaft furSchwerionenforschung) Cyclotron, Darmstadt, Germany, wereused for high energy testing and comparison of memories andmicroprocessors. At the 1988 NSREC, a summary Cf-252paper was presented covering four years of ESTEC SEU testresults on 35 different microprocessors and 33 different mem-ories [12].At the 1989 NSREC, the UoSAT-2 OBC SEU data were re-

ported to be predominately proton induced, (see Fig. 6), withDynamic-RAMs significantly more SEU sensitive than Static-RAMs [13]. This triggered a major change toward proton SEUground testing. Already in June 1989, a large number of memo-ries were SEU tested at the Harwell VEC with proton energiesof 40 and 60 MeV. The high upset rate at low energy pushedESTEC towards further testing at higher energies which weredelivered by the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), Switzerland, inNovember 1989. More than 30 different device types, primarilymemories, all showed an increased number of SEUswhen testedat 100 and 209 MeV.Following the proton test activities in 1989, the first paper

covering both heavy ion and proton ground testing, includingactual orbital performance (see Fig. 6.), and upset predictionswas presented at the 1990 NSREC [14]. The paper primarilycovered the UoSAT-2 OBC upsets as seen in the Texas In-struments 64 K-bit DRAMs, for which we also got access toflight spare devices for ground testing. In early 1991, the CEASATURN Synchrotron at Sacley, France was used for protontests with energies between 30 and 800 MeV. Fortunately,for devices tested at that time, little or no increase in thesaturated cross section occurred at these extreme energies. Atthe 1991 NSREC, two years of orbitally measured SEU andtotal dose data were presented for the Meteosat-3 radiationeffects experiment in geostationary orbit [15]. Also in 1991,

the first international Radiation and its Effects on Compo-nents and Systems (RADECS) Conference took place at LaGrande-Motte, near Montpellier, France. Here ESTEC alsopresented three papers [16]–[18] with papers the year beforeat the ESA Electronic Component Conference [19] and theESA/ESTEC WMA Workshop [20], [21]. From this point, itbecomes too complex to report everything. However, I wouldlike to round off the early NSREC contributions by mentioningthe year 1992, when papers got admitted into the Conferenceas oral or poster presentations and were later subsequentlypublished in the TNS or were presented in the poster DataWorkshop session and later published in the Data WorkshopRecord (without review). As a standard conference paper, ESAreported the loss of an instrument on-board the ERS-1 satellitedue to a proton induced latch-up (see later) [22] and a DataWorkshop paper addressed radiation pre-screening of RISCmicroprocessors [23].

V. IRRADIATION FACILITIES

The European Component Irradiation Facilities (ECIF) goesback to the early 1980s when ESTEC installed 4 different CASEsystemswhere both Cf-252 andAm-241 sources were used. Onevery interesting set-up was a CASE system placed on top ofthe test-head of our VLSI tester. This set-up allowed the deviceunder test (DUT) to be placed within the vacuum chamber underCf-252 exposure, while running all types of electrical testing aswell as checking for upsets. Even today the laboratory still hasand uses the 4 CASE systems previously designed by the authorbut the sources have been changed several times (effective halflife 2.64 years).As mentioned earlier, the ESTEC GAMMABEAM 150C

Co-60 facility was installed in 1988 and has been in use eversince. Even though the gamma cell was moved to a new loca-tion in 2007, it still has the same housing: a collimated layoutallowing DUTs to be exposed to different dose rates varyingover a range up to 8 meters away from the source. The initialactivity was 2040 Ci. However, with a half life of 5.3 years, thesource has been re-loaded several times.The first external test facility to be part of ECIF was the

Proton Irradiation Facility (PIF) at the Paul Scherrer Institut,Villigen, Switzerland. This facility, under ESA contract since1992, has beenmoved around amongst many different beam linelocations over the years. A low energy OPTIS [24] setup pro-vided protons with energies between 10–60 MeV and the highenergy PIF between 30–250 MeV. Earlier, Dr. A. Zehnder, andlater Dr. W. Hajdas, looked after the PIF activities. Today theexperimental area of PIF is part of the PROSCAN layout witha dedicated permanent cave and test setup for SEE testing.Following an initial evaluation and assessment period in the

early 1990s, the second external test facility to be part of ECIFwas the Heavy Ion Facility (HIF) at the Centre de Recherches duCyclotron, Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium.This facility officially became part of the ECIF in 1996 but hasseen quite a few upgrades, primarily under the management ofGuy Berger, since its opening. An interesting point is the com-plementary nature of the two ion cocktails available at the HIF:a high LET cocktail and a highly penetrating ion cocktail [25].


Fig. 7. ECIF logo—identifying ESAs test locations.

Certain packaging and assembly technology changes inmodern semiconductor devices require that heavy ion testingtake place by irradiating the back side of the DUT. This, ingeneral, requires higher ion penetration ranges for SEE testing.This issue was evaluated and assessed at the RADiation EffectsFacility (RADEF) at Jyväskylä, Finland, at the beginning of the21st century. Following various upgrades [26], as proposed andimplemented by Dr. Ari Virtanen, this facility was officiallycommissioned in 2005 as the third external ESA facility underthe ECIF, as clearly identified on the official ESA ECIF logo,see Fig. 7.Most of the time, accelerator SEE testing is carried out using

beams calibrated and monitored by the facility provider. Oc-casionally, these beams have not met their specifications due tounknown detector degradations, faulty detectors, setup changes,misalignments or contaminated beams. The facility user (exper-imenter) has no means of checking suspicious beams and oftendiscovers data discrepancies too late, often at home base whenanalyzing the data previously gathered on-site. So in order tominimize test errors due to faulty beams, the facility user shouldhave the option of double-checking suspicious beams. Since2003, ESA has worked on such an option and in 2005 cameup with a simple beam checking system called the “ReferenceSEU Monitor”.

VI. REFERENCE SEU MONITOR

Earlier attempts to compare SEU data from different test fa-cilities often failed due to slightly different test setups or testconditions. Now, the same test system—referred to, as the “Ref-erence SEU Monitor” can be used every time.In summary, the Reference SEU Monitor system presents a

simple and reliable beam monitoring system which can be usedat the accelerator and accepted by both the SEE experimenterand beam provider in support of beam calibrations. This system,based on SEU in a well- calibrated 4 Mbit SRAM as the de-tector element, was assembled and tested in 2005 in collabora-tion with HIREX Engineering (Dr. F. X. Guerre) [27]. With itssimple control from a laptop or PC, monitoring of SEUs may bedirectly compared with pre-calibrated SEU curves, previouslyobtained at heavy ion, proton and neutron facilities. The ‘de-tector element’, an Atmel AT60142F SRAM, has a die area of6.1 mm x 11.2 mm. The layout of the motherboard and the de-tector board can be seen in Fig. 8. (the ‘detector element’ hasthe lid taped on).Many experimenters have confirmed the need for such a ref-

erence system at accelerators [28] and even beam providers now

Fig. 8. “Reference SEU Monitor” system.

find the new version attractive. The new version of the Refer-ence SEU Monitor is slightly improved with the ‘detector el-ement’, the Atmel AT60142F SRAM, now in a hybrid config-uration. This allows for better beam profile and homogeneitychecks, since the 4 dies now cover a much larger area, approxi-mately 20 mm x 20 mm. However, it is up to the user to selectthe optimal mode for beam calibration.As detailed in a NSREC 2008 paper [28], this ‘reference stan-

dard’ has helped many researchers and is even used routinely atmany accelerators as part of beam calibrations. However, as alsooutlined in [28], the ultimate goal is to have a space referencestandard. Pursuit of this objective started back in 2008 with thedevelopment of a Technology DemonstrationModule (TDM) tobe flown on-board the ESA PROBA-II satellite.

VII. TECHNOLOGY DEMONSTRATION MODULE

The TDM is a component radiation effects experimentfocusing on Single Event Effects in memory devices in orderto address and study the difference between flight and groundevents. The TDM consists of four different radiation effectsexperiments in order to study in-flight performance of: 1) SEUsin the Reference SEU Monitor (4 SRAM devices in hybridconfiguration), 2) Latch-up events in 4 different SRAM de-vices, 3) in-flight technology demonstration of 8 G-bit FLASHmemories, and 4) measurement of the local Total Ionizing Dose(TID) environment employing RADFET dosimeters. The flightunit of the TDM, as shown in a folded out configuration inFig. 9, has the 16 Mbit SRAM Multi-Chip Module operated inthe same Static mode as in the Reference SEU Monitor system(at the front of the right-hand side board).The TDM was manufactured by QinetiQ (Belgium) under

an ESA contract. The TDM was integrated into the AdvancedData & Power Management System (ADPMS) as part of theESA satellite PROBA-II (Project for On-Board Autonomy).PROBA-II was launched on 2 November 2009 into a sun-syn-chronous 800 km polar orbit. The 265 g TDM was activated on15 February 2010 and has produced reliable radiation data eversince. Further details and a first set of TDM orbital data can befound in [29]. A second set of orbital data was published in [30]with further reporting currently in preparation. In Fig. 10, thetotal number of SEUs and SELs as observed in a month, April


Fig. 9. The TDM Flight Unit folded out.

Fig. 10. Location of all TDM SEUs and SELs as observed during the monthof April 2010.

2010, has been plotted on a world map. Here it is very clear thatmost SEEs are observed in the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA)and are therefore likely to have been induced by protons.During a previous analysis period without solar events, the

’Reference SEUMonitor’ showed 849 SEUs occurring over 403days, thus an average upset rate of 2.11 SEUs/day/MCM or 0.53SEUs/day/device. Looking at the total number of events andorbital positions, we see 88.6% SEUs occurring in the SAA,7.2% SEUs at the polar horns and 4.2% SEUs at north/south of the equatorial plane but outside the SAA. If we alsolook at the occurrence of SEUs plotted against time we see afairly even distribution as presented in Fig. 11. Here we coverthe same time period and see the daily number of SEUs variesfrom 0 to 7 events/day, an expected variation since not all orbitstraverse the SAA.

VIII. SPACECRAFT ANOMALIES CAUSED BY SEE

Spacecraft anomalies in general are not the type of publicrelation any project likes to see advertised. However, over theyears much has been learned from these failures. Here, I wouldlike to summarize two spacecraft events that probably helpedmany other projects, one proton and one transient related, bothreported previously at NSREC.The paper presented at NSREC 1992 [22] with the title, A

Verified Proton Induced Latch-up in Space, manifestly intro-duces the subject. The ESA Earth Resources Satellite ERS-1

Fig. 11. Daily distribution of in-orbit SEUs as recorded in the Atmel AT68166MCM.

Fig. 12. ERS-1/PRARE Failure location, proton latch-up.

was launched into a 784 km sun-synchronous polar orbit inJuly 1991. One of the non-ESA experimental instrumentscarried was the Precision Range and Range Rate Equipment(PRARE). After about 5 days of operation, the experiment shutdown immediately following a transient over-current conditionand could not be restarted. This switch-off occurred during apass over the South Atlantic, see Fig. 12. During the 5 days ofexperimental operation, a number of anomalies had been noted,including a number of SEUs and a slave processor reboot.Ground testing soon identified the possible cause of failure tobe incorporated semiconductor devices (either a Z80 micropro-cessor, a CMOS EEPROM memory or a RAM memory).Ground testing was carried out using the engineering model

of PRARE and 30/60MeV protons at the PIF/PSI facility. Even-tually, a NECD4464G 64 kbit CMOSSRAMmemorywas iden-tified to be susceptible to latch-up and the full orbital failurecondition was simulated. Heavy ion testing of ’flight spare de-vices’ also revealed latch-up occurrences even at extremely lowLETs and CASE testing showed one latch-up for every 9 fis-sion particles. I still do not recall any other device to be moreSEL sensitive. However, a very similar SEL event in May 2005caused ESA’s BIOPAN-5 on-board FOTON-2 (altitude 280/305km) to fail. This time it was an 8 Mbit SRAM from BrillianceSemiconductors going into a latch-up condition during the 5thorbit. This device type, identical to the one tested in [28] has anSEL sensitivity similar to the NEC device with a heavy ion crosssection threshold below . For both events,


Fig. 13. SOHO SSR Upsets as recorded over 1562 days.

no ground SEE testing of the flown/failed devices was carriedout prior to flight!The second example of a spacecraft anomaly is for the Solar

and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), ESAs solar satellite in aHalo orbit around the Lagrangian (L1) point located 1,500,000km from the Earth in the sunward direction. SOHO experienceda large number of SEEs, all of which were recoverable. Analysisof all SEEs experienced during the first five years of successfuloperation was reported in 2002 [31]. Events were reported asoccurring in the various power supply units (PSUs), in the solid-state recorder (SSR) and in one of the instruments.The most illustrative phenomenon is probably the SEUs ob-

served in the 2 Gbit SSR. These upsets, between April 1996and August 2001, were time plotted, as shown in Fig. 13. Theinitial average upset rate fluctuates around 1 SEU/minute anddecreases towards 0.5 SEU/minute over the 5 year period. Thelarge peaks happened during major solar flares where the dailyaverage event rate even exceeded 32 SEUs/minute during theJuly 14th solar event in 2000. In addition to the solar events, theeffect of solar activity is apparent in the decline in the upset rateas solar maximum is approached. These data were in agreementwith other observations and predictions.However, the ’self switch-off events’ in the redundant and

protected power units were really the main concern. Over the re-ported period, more than 20 power switch-off events occurredduring normal operations with bus, load, voltage, current andtemperature at nominal levels. The suspicion that these eventswere SEE related was confirmed during a major ground testprogram using identical test conditions as used by SOHO [32].Also, SOHO flight spare devices were used at both heavy ionand proton facilities. The initial suspicion that these events werecaused by transient spikes produced by a small number of linearintegrated circuits and induced by cosmic rays or protons, wassubstantiated through test results and predictions as presentedin [32]. This paper also stressed the importance of performingSEE tests with application configurations and operating condi-tions identical to those used in the missions, particular in thecase of linear ICs.

Fig. 14. Reno Harboe-Sørensen at NSREC 2007.

Finally, the SOHO transient SEE experience was used tospecify a safe margin standard for validating future sciencemissions using the same spacecraft platform.

IX. CONCLUSIONS

Over the years, I greatly enjoyed my work as a Radiation Ef-fects Engineer at ESA/ESTEC. I had the pleasure to work onmany projects going back to HEOS-II, TD-1A and ESRO IV atthe beginning of the 1970s, and to BEPICOLOMBO and SEN-TINEL towards the end of my career. Internally and externallyI came into contact with many people and would like to thankthem all for typically many years of good working relationships.Unfortunately, this short historical SEE summary paper does notallow me to list the names of all the people I have worked with.However, many additional names still appear in the final Refer-ence section, as authors or co-authors of referenced papers.As a final career highlight, I treasure the IEEE and Nuclear

Plasma Science Society—Radiation Effects Award—receivedin 2007 at NSREC (see Fig. 14), in Hawaii, USA, and I wouldlike to close this short ESA SEE summary paper with the awardcitation: “For contributions to the dissemination and advance-ment of radiation effects research associated with hardened sys-tems for space applications”.

REFERENCES

[1] L. Adams and I. Thompson, “The use of an industrial X-ray sourcefor electronic component radiation effects work,” IEEE Trans. Comp.Hyb. Man. Tech., vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 144–149, Mar. 1980.

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[3] J. H. Stephen, T. K. Sanderson, D. Mapper, J. Farren, R. H. Sørensen,and L. Adams, “Cosmic ray simulation experiments for the study ofsingle event upsets and latch-up in CMOS memories,” IEEE Trans.Nucl. Sci., vol. 30, no. 6, pp. 4464–4469, Dec. 1983.


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[6] D. Mapper, T. K. Sanderson, J. H. Stephen, J. Farren, R. Harboe-Sørensen, and L. Adams, “An experimental study of the effect ofabsorbers on the let of the fission particles emitted by CF-252,” IEEETrans. Nucl. Sci., vol. 31, no. 6, pp. 4276–4281, Dec. 1985.

[7] J. T. Blandford, Jr and J. C. Pickel, “Use of CF-252 to determine pa-rameters for SEU rate calculation,” IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol. 32, no.6, pp. 4282–4286, Dec. 1985.

[8] R. Harboe-Sørensen, L. Adams, E. J. Daly, C. Sansoe, D. Mapper, andT. K. Sanderson, “The SEU risk assessment of Z80a, 8086 and 80C86microprocessors intended for use in a low altitude polar orbit,” IEEETrans. Nucl. Sci., vol. 33, no. 6, pp. 1626–1631, Dec. 1986.

[9] D. K. Nichols, W. E. Price, W. A. Kolasinski, R. Koga, J. C. Pickel, J.T. Bladford, Jr, and A. E. Weskiewicz, “Trends in part susceptibility tosingle event upset from heavy ions,” IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol. 32,no. 6, pp. 4189–4194, Dec. 1985.

[10] J. Thomlinson, L. Adams, and R.Harboe-Sørensen, “The SEU and totaldose response of the INMOS transputer,” IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol.NS-34, no. 6, pp. 1803–1807, Dec. 1987.

[11] T. K. Sanderson, D. Mapper, J. H. Stephen, J. Farren, L. Adams, and R.Harboe-Sørensen, “SEU measurements using CF-252 fission particles,on CMOS static RAMs, subjected to a continuous period of low doserate CO-60 irradiation,” IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol. NS-34, no. 6, pp.1287–1291, Dec. 1987.

[12] R. Harboe-Sørensen, L. Adams, and T. K. Sanderson, “A summary ofSEU test results using CF-252,” IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol. NS-35,no. 6, pp. 1622–1628, Dec. 1988.

[13] L. Adams, R. Harboe-Sørensen, and E. J. Daly, “Proton induced upsetsin the low altitude polar orbit,” IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol. 36, no. 6,pp. 2339–2343, Dec. 1989.

[14] R. Harboe-Sørensen, E. J. Daly, C. I. Underwood, J. Ward, and L.Adams, “The behaviour of measured SEU at low altitude during pe-riods of high solar activity,” IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol. 37, no. 6, pp.1938–1943, Dec. 1990.

[15] L. Adams, E. J. Daly, R. Harboe-Sørensen, A. G. Holmes-Siedle, A. K.Ward, and R. A. Bull, “Measurements of SEU and total dose in geo-stationary orbit under normal and solar flare conditions,” IEEE Trans.Nucl. Sci., vol. 38, no. 6, pp. 1686–1692, Dec. 1991.

[16] R. Harboe-Sørensen, R. Müller, E. J. Daly, B. Nickson, J. Schmitt, andF. J. Rombeck, “Radiation pre-screening of 4 Mbit dynamic randomaccess memories for space application,” Proc. RADECS, pp. 489–504,Sep. 1991.

[17] J. Dreute, W. Heinrich, H. Röcher, R. Harboe-Sørensen, L. Adams, D.Schardt, and J. Vetter, “Investigation of single effects of high energeticheavy ions,” Proc. RADECS, pp. 505–508, Sep. 1991.

[18] R. Harboe-Sørensen, H. Seran, P. Armbruster, and L. Adams, “Thesingle event upset response of the analog devices Adsp2100a, digitalsignal processor,” Proc. RADECS, pp. 457–461, Sep. 1991.

[19] R. Harboe-Sørensen and R. Müller, “Radiation pre-screening of 4 Mbitdynamic random access memories for space application,” in Proc. EsaElectron. Components Conf., ESA SP-313, Nov. 1990, pp. 427–432.

[20] R. Harboe-Sørensen, “Proton and heavy ion testing of electronic de-vices for analysis of SEU at low altitude,” in Proc. ESA Space Envi-ronment Workshop, ESA XX, Oct. 1990, pp. 11–16.

[21] C. I. Underwood, E. J. Daly, and R. Harboe-Sørensen, “Observationand analysis of single event upset phenomena on-board the UoSAT-2satellite,” in Proc. ESA Space Environment Workshop, ESA XX, Oct.1990, pp. 23–30.

[22] L. Adams, E. J. Daly, R. Harboe-Sørensen, B. Nickson, J. Haines, W.Schafer, M. Conrad, H. Griech, J. Merkel, and T. Schwall, “A verifiedproton induced latch-up in space,” IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol. 39, no.6, pp. 1804–1808, Dec. 1992.

[23] R. Harboe-Sørensen and A. Sund, “Radiation pre-screening of R3000/R3000a microprocessors,” in Proc. IEEE Rad. Effects Data WorkshopRec., Jul. 1992, pp. 34–41.

[24] W. Hajdas, A. Zender, F. Burri, J. Bialkowski, L. Adams, B. Nickson,and R. Harboe-Sørensen, “Radiation effects testing facility in PSI lowenergy OPTIS area,” in Proc. IEEE Rad. Effects Data Workshop Rec.,Jul. 1998, pp. 152–155.

[25] G. Berger, G. Ryckewaert, R. Harboe-Sørensen, and L. Adams, “Theheavy ion irradiation facility at cyclone—a dedicated SEE beam line,”in Proc. IEEE Rad. Effects Data Workshop Rec., Jul. 1996, pp. 78–83.

[26] A. Virtanen, R. Harboe-Sørensen, A. Javanainen, H. Kettunen, H.Koivisto, and I. Riihimäki, “Upgrades for the RADEF facility,” inProc. IEEE Rad. Effects Data Workshop Rec., Jul. 2007, pp. 38–41.

[27] R. Harboe-Sørensen, F.-X. Guerre, and A. Roseng, “Design, testingand calibration of a reference SEU monitor system,” Proc. RADECS,pp. B3.1–B3.6, Sep. 2005.

[28] R. Harboe-Sørensen, C. Poivey, F.-X. Guerre, A. Roseng, F. Lochon,G. Berger, W. Hajdas, A. Virtanen, H. Kettunen, and S. Duzellier,“From the reference SEU monitor to the technology demonstrationmodule on-board PROBA-II,” IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol. 55, no. 6,pp. 3082–3087, Dec. 2008.

[29] R. Harboe-Sørensen, C. Poivey, N. Fleurinck, K. Puimege, A. Zadeh,F.-X. Guerre, F. Lochon, M. Kaddour, L. Li, D. Walter, A. Keating,A. Jaksic, and M. Poizat, “The technology demonstration moduleon-board PROBA-II,” IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol. 58, no. 3, pp.1001–1007, Jun. 2011.

[30] R. Harboe-Sørensen, C. Poivey, A. Zadeh, A. Keating, N. Fleurinck, K.Puimege, F.-X. Guerre, F. Lochon, M. Kaddour, L. Li, and D. Walter,“PROBA-II technology demonstration module in-flight data analysis,”IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol. 59, no. 4, pp. 1086–1091, Aug. 2012.

[31] R. Harboe-Sørensen, E. Daly, F. Teston, H. Schweitzer, R. Nartallo, P.Perol, F. Vandenbussche, H. Dzitko, and J. Cretolle, “Observation andanalysis of single event effects on-board the SOHO satellite,” IEEETrans. Nucl. Sci., vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 1345–1350, Jun. 2002.

[32] R. Harboe-Sørensen, F. X. Guerre, H. Constans, J. van Dooren, G.Berger, and W. Hajdas, “Single event transient characterisation ofanalog IC’s for ESA’s satellites,” Proc. RADECS, pp. 573–581, Sep.1999.

40 Years of Radiation Single Event Effects at the European Space Agency, ESTEC

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