‘Radiation upset’ confused computers, caused false alarm on International Space Station NASA has suggested that radiation caused a computer malfunction on the International Space Station. Wednesday’s daily station report from the ISS mentioned that the Crew-1 Dragon spacecraft parked at the space station “experienced an unexpected wakeup triggered by false ISS emergency alarms caused by erroneous data from the …
I think (but not sure so feel free to correct!) that the ISS is low enough that it is protected by the Earth's magnetic field for the majority of solar issues. I don't know if it is clear whether this incident was Solar or Cosmic radiation though. And obviously, such protection just reduces the incidence, not stops it altogether.
If I recall correctly, although there is an increased risk from long term spaceflight (even in the relatively low altitude ISS), the only time that specific events (such as Solar flares) have needed to be considered was for the Moon missions where the astronauts were outside the magnetically protected zone. I don't recall that any special consideration was given to the electronics but as it was significantly "chunkier" back then (yup, technical term, that is) it may well have been much less sensitive to such things!
I know that solar flares can be an issue for satellites (but not sure whether that is all of them or whether geo-stationary are more at risk, being further out). But, as shown here, computer systems can get messed up by a single bit flip whereas lifeforms are a bit more resistant (but not invulnerable) to similar events.
Nowadays we have some early warning, early enough that very worst case if a bad solar flare heads our way they can jump into their vessels (Soyuz and/or Dragon) and get within the atmosphere before it reaches us.
In less bad cases they take shelter in the more protected parts of the station and ride it out.
Such events are not entirely unprecedented: https://www.rt.com/news/402946-iss-shelter-solar-flare/
There are different types of radiation. High-energy protons generally don't affect electronics as much as secondary radiation like electrons etc. It is actually safer (in space) to be in a thin-shelled vehicle as a thicker steel wall will produce a particle shower.
I believe that radiation hardened ICs are available. They are made by over doping the transistors. You won't get the density of a modern CPU but it will survive much more radiation.
"The ISS isn't in low grav at all. It's only a few hundred miles up. Gravity up there is only about 10% lower than it is down here."
But the ISS does not meet the equal and opposite pushing back part of the equation that we have down here, so the picture is not quite complete.
An unusual (to me) use of an imperial weight unit to describe a volume of liquid, allowing even for left pondian foibles it seems odd as they usually go for quarts, cups or ounces.
Here in Medioleftpondia, US customary units of mass are used for liquids in certain circumstances, e.g. the hundredweight (100 pounds avoirdupois = 45.359237 kg), in which minimum farm prices for raw milk are specified by the US Department of Agriculture.
"unless we are in Quebec when we use Kg, unless we don't feel like it and so use pounds - the difference doesn't really matter anyway"
Wasn;t there a case of a passenger aircraft taking off without the fuel to reach it's destination because of exactly that difference? ie they asked for fuel in Kg and had it pumped in lbs.
What will they think of next, hamster-powered generators?
I suppose in space it all comes down to a weight/energy ratio - if it's one hamster to the kWh but 2.5 cats then the cat reactor wins ... but if porcines are 3.5 kWh then we'll have PIGS IN SPAAAAACCCEEE!
Keep mew-ving along ...
I'm reminded of when a colleague opened a piece of land-based kit and found a PCB full of a chip we didn't recognise at all. After a quick search we discovered it was the radiation hardened version of a chip that would likely be used in this application. We wondered why they would use chips that potentially cost hundreds of time the amount. The best conclusion was that they were surplus product that never made it into space and they got them for a song.
Which makes me think that as chip fabrication processes grow smaller, surely the energy to flip one bit becomes smaller too, meaning more bits will get flipped.
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