Practical guidance for radiation-effects decisions during hardware development. The guides focus on the questions that come up during actual hardware development: what needs to be tested, what existing data can support, where common screening numbers came from, what assumptions are hidden inside a rate calculation, and what evidence is enough to close a requirement.
If radiation is only one of several jobs you have been handed, start with the commercial-space RHA guide or the COTS checklist.
COTS Parts in Space: A Radiation Risk Assessment Checklist
How to decide, part by part, whether a commercial component can fly, what evidence is enough, and what to do when there is none
Read the guide →Heavy Ion SEE Test Planning: LET, Fluence, Range, Bias and How Much Is Enough
Planning LET, fluence, ion range, bias, and temperature, with references to the applicable test methods
Read the guide →Not Every Error in the Beam Is a Single Event Effect
NAND flash errors, DRAM and scaled SRAM stuck bits, and leakage current growth in power FETs are cumulative damage that shows up during heavy ion and proton tests, gets counted as SEE, and breaks the rate calculation
Read the guide →Radiation Hardness Assurance for Commercial Space: Where to Start
A practical starting point for a smallsat or constellation team that has to make radiation decisions without a radiation department
Read the guide →How to Run a Single Event Effects Analysis: Process, Timing, Roles and Review
The eight parts of a complete analysis, their timing, team responsibilities, common review findings, and a review checklist
Read the guide →How to Calculate a Single Event Effect Rate from Heavy Ion Test Data
From counts and fluence to events per device per day and probability per mission, with a worked example you can reproduce
Read the guide →Latchup or High-Current SEFI?
The supply current jumps during a heavy ion run. Whether it was latchup or a functional interrupt decides the protection design, the rate and the test plan, and three bench tests usually settle it
Read the guide →Single Event Effects Explained: SEU, MBU, SEFI, SET, SEL, SEB and SEGR
What each single event effect is, what causes it, which parts show it, whether it is destructive, and how it is measured and mitigated
Read the guide →Total Dose, Displacement Damage and Single Event Effects Compared
The three ways space radiation damages electronics, which particles cause each, which parts care, how each is measured and how each is specified
Read the guide →Reference pages
Analog Single Event Transient Guideline
Bounding transient amplitude and width by device family when you have no data on your part.
Open →Standards, Test Methods and the Reasoning Behind Their Numbers
Why 1e7 ions, why LET 37 and 75, why 100 mil of aluminum, why 50 to 300 rad per second, with facilities and data sources.
Open →Proton versus Heavy Ion Latchup Case Studies
Parts tested both ways, and what the proton result did and did not predict.
Open →Guides from elsewhere
The guides above are opinionated and short. The documents below are the ones they lean on: the agency and laboratory guidelines that define practice, the standards bodies, and the few manufacturers who publish real radiation guidance. Links go to the publisher where a public copy exists.
NASA and JPL
- Avionics Radiation Hardness Assurance (RHA) Guidelines NASA/TM-20210018053, NESC; Hodson, Pellish, Austin, Campola, Ladbury, LaBel, Allen, Gaza and Willis, 2021. The NASA reference for deriving RHA requirements and evaluating avionics for TID, TNID and SEE: environment definition, part selection, testing, layout, mitigation, and the requirements flow. Start here if you are writing requirements.
- Board-Level Proton Testing Book of Knowledge S. M. Guertin, JPL for the NEPP program, 2017. When testing a whole board with protons makes sense instead of testing parts, what it can and cannot show, why energies near or above 200 MeV, and the factor of ten it can buy on a worst case estimate for an untested board.
- Proton Single Event Effects (SEE) Guideline NASA GSFC, K. A. LaBel technical adviser, 2009. Whether a proton SEE test is warranted at all, decided by orbit, technology, existing data and application. A decision guide, not a test procedure.
- Proton Test Guideline Development, Lessons Learned Buchner, Marshall, Kniffin and LaBel, NASA GSFC for NEPP and DTRA, 2002. The how-to for proton testing: facilities, energy selection, dosimetry, displacement damage accumulated during the test, and what went wrong in earlier campaigns.
- Radiation Effects Test Guideline Document for Nonvolatile Memories: Lessons Learned Oldham, Chen, Buchner and LaBel, NASA GSFC and NRL for NEPP and DTRA, 2013. How to test flash and other nonvolatile memories, where the failure modes hide (charge pumps, controllers, retention) and what a pass means.
- Testing Guideline for Single Event Gate Rupture (SEGR) of Power MOSFETs L. Scheick, JPL Publication 08-10, 2008. The bias, ion, range and step procedure for SEGR and SEB safe operating area tests, and why ion range and angle decide whether the result means anything.
- Guideline for Ground Radiation Testing of Microprocessors in the Space Radiation Environment F. Irom, JPL Publication 08-13, 2008. Test approach for processors: what to exercise, how to count, and how to separate cache, register and SEFI events. Search the title for a copy.
- Assessing and Mitigating Radiation Effects in Xilinx FPGAs P. Adell and G. Allen, JPL for NEPP, 2008. Configuration upsets, scrubbing and mitigation for SRAM based FPGAs, with the test approach that separates configuration from user logic.
- Recommendations on Use of COTS EEE Parts for NASA Missions, Phase I and Phase II NESC, NASA/TM-20205011579 (2020) and NASA/TM-20220018183 (2022). The agency position on commercial parts: risk classes, what evidence is expected and where radiation fits in the parts flow. Phase II is the newer of the two.
- Guidance for Implementation of a Single Event Effect Criticality Analysis (SEECA) M. J. Campola and others, NASA GSFC, 2020; the original SEECA is LaBel and others, NASA 431-REF-000273, 1996. The method for deciding which SEE matter to which function, still the skeleton of every criticality analysis. This site's SEE Analysis Workbook follows it.
- An Introduction to Space Radiation Effects on Microelectronics L. D. Edmonds, C. E. Barnes and L. Z. Scheick, JPL Publication 00-06, 2000. The primer: environment, mechanisms and effects in sixty pages, written by people who did the physics. Read before any of the above.
- Radiation Effects and Analysis Lessons: a Scientist's Field Instruction to Explain Radiation Testing E. J. Wyrwas, SSAI for NASA GSFC and NEPP, 2022. A slide primer on what a test campaign looks like for someone who has never run one: fixtures, beam time, counting, and the things that are obvious only afterwards.
- NEPP publications and the GSFC Radiation Effects and Analysis Group NASA. The archive behind all of the above: test reports, guidelines, workshop talks and the REAG site and the GSFC radiation database.
DoD, Sandia and DTRA
- Radiation Hardness Assurance Testing of Microelectronic Devices and Integrated Circuits: Radiation Environments, Physical Mechanisms, and Foundations for Hardness Assurance J. R. Schwank, M. R. Shaneyfelt and P. E. Dodd, Sandia SAND2008-6851P (2008) and IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science 60(3), 2074, 2013. Why the test protocols are built the way they are: environments, mechanisms, source selection and the hardness assurance philosophy. Answers the question "why do we test it that way".
- Radiation Hardness Assurance Testing of Microelectronic Devices and Integrated Circuits: Test Guideline for Proton and Heavy Ion Single-Event Effects J. R. Schwank, M. R. Shaneyfelt and P. E. Dodd, Sandia report (2008) and IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science 60(3), 2101, 2013. The detailed SEU, SEL, SEB and SEGR test guideline for heavy ions and protons, from decades of remote site testing. The most complete single test how-to in print.
- Pulsed-Laser Single-Event Effects (PL SEE) Testing, A Practical Desk Reference NRL, NASA and JPL for DTRA, DTRA-TR-23-43, 2023. Planning and running a laser SEE campaign: what it can map, how it relates to ion data, and the pitfalls that waste facility time.
- MIL-HDBK-814, Ionizing Dose and Neutron Hardness Assurance Guidelines for Microcircuits and Semiconductor Devices Department of Defense, 1994. The handbook behind MIL-STD-883 Method 1019 and the RLAT sample statistics: dose, dose rate, neutron fluence and the lot acceptance logic this site's TID tools use. Search the number on DLA ASSIST.
- Transient Radiation Effects on Electronics (TREE) Handbook Defense Nuclear Agency, DNA-H-95-61, 1995. Dose rate, prompt gamma and neutron effects for the weapon environment. Not a space document, but the reference when a dose rate or neutron requirement appears. Available through DTIC.
ESA and ECSS
- ECSS-Q-ST-60-15C Rev.1, Radiation hardness assurance, EEE components ECSS, 2025 (replaces the 2012 issue). The European RHA requirements standard: TID, TNID and SEE, the RHA plan, margins, lot acceptance and the documentation a program has to produce.
- ECSS-E-HB-20-40A, Engineering techniques for radiation effects mitigation in ASICs and FPGAs handbook ECSS, 2023 (formerly ECSS-Q-HB-60-02A, 2016). Mitigation techniques by design stage, from process and layout through cell libraries, logic, embedded memory and software, with how to verify that they work.
- ESCC Basic Specification 25100, Single Event Effects Test Method and Guidelines, and ESCC 22900, Total Dose Steady-State Irradiation Test Method ESA ESCC. The European test methods, the counterparts of JESD57A and Method 1019, with their own fluence, dose rate and annealing rules. On the ESCIES site under specifications.
Manufacturers
- Radiation Handbook for Electronics R. Baumann and K. Kruckmeyer, Texas Instruments, 2019 (Rev. A). A textbook given away: environments, interaction physics, dose and single event effects by technology, mitigation, test and qualification. The best single introduction from industry. Landing page.
- Device Reliability Report, UG116 AMD (Xilinx), updated twice a year. Terrestrial neutron SEU rates per JESD89A for every FPGA family, configuration memory and block RAM, in FIT per Mb: the source for the atmospheric numbers, and the model of how a manufacturer should publish SEU data.
- Radiation-tolerant FPGA documentation: RTG4 and RT PolarFire Microchip. Radiation reports and mitigation application notes (clock and reset networks, SET filtering, memory protection) for the flash based radiation tolerant families.
- Space products: radiation testing and RLAT practice Renesas (Intersil). How a hardened analog supplier runs lot acceptance: low and high dose rate RLAT by wafer, SEE reports per part. Useful as a picture of what a complete radiation data package looks like.
Books
- Single Event Effects in Aerospace E. L. Petersen, Wiley, 2011. The reference on cross sections, rate prediction and data analysis, by the person who shaped most of the conventions.
- Handbook of Radiation Effects, second edition A. Holmes-Siedle and L. Adams, Oxford, 2002. Environments, dose, displacement damage and single events across all device types, with the engineering tables.
- The Effects of Radiation on Electronic Systems, second edition G. C. Messenger and M. S. Ash, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992. The system level view, including dose rate and neutron effects, from the weapons era.