So tungsten-powder-densified UHMWPE ?
On Thu, Dec 5, 2019, 4:26 PM Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, 5 Dec 2019, Pax L wrote:
MarCO was pretty short, as an example. I don't think any of the lunar
cubesats on EM1 will be particularly long either.
Yeah, but this is a self-fulfilling prophecy: those are cubesats, NASA
doesn't think cubesats can last long, so it gives them only missions where
short lives are fine (and nobody else is really depending on them working
at all).
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched in 2005 and is still going strong
(and it's not even the oldest active Mars orbiter), the Opportunity rover
was already on Mars by then and it died last year (even Curiosity is 8
years old), LRO has been in lunar orbit since 2009...
I don't think any of these have much in the way of rad hard parts
either.
I think you'd have a surprise coming if you dug into details -- e.g. the
Iris transponder that the MarCOs used and many of the EM1 passengers will
use was explicitly designed to be (moderately) rad-hard.
Certainly everything on MRO, Opportunity, etc. etc. was rad-hard, because
it was (and still is) deemed mandatory for a "serious" mission.
Henry