Application of commercial electronics in the motors and actuator systems for mars surface missions

A motor drive electronics assembly for Mars Curiosity Rover: An example of assembly qualification for extreme environments

“…The monitoring and data recording for electrical continuity was a continuous scan during the temperature cycling. Details of the selection process and assembly testing and analysis, including the design of the test vehicles, test set-up and continuous monitoring, detailed test results, wire bond modeling, failure analysis with SEM cross-section images, and some materials combination suggestions can be found in the references [3][4][12][13][14][15]. This paper is focused on the qualification process for the technology development with the summary of the results.…”

“…A functional go/no-go testing on the electronics down to as low as -180°C was first conducted to characterize the electronics at low temperatures [3][4]. While the majority of the electronics selected were functional and survived the low temperature test, all the op-amps tested failed to meet the performance requirements of the assembly over the wide temperature range.…”