From the article: "Infineon did not report the flaw to NASA because the company did not know what the transistors would be used for, Fitzpatrick said."
They might not have "known", but come on, you're selling radiation-hardened chips to NASA. You can sure make an educated guess that they might be used for a probe.
I'm guessing there's a clause missing in the contract that says Infineon must disclose all known problems to NASA regardless of how the chips will be used.
Regardless, there are some people at NASA to whom 'Infineon' is now a curse word.
"I'm guessing there's a clause missing in the contract that says Infineon must disclose all known problems to NASA regardless of how the chips will be used."
The article doesn't say or even imply that NASA has any contract with Infineon.
It seems much more likely they are buying the chips through one of their approved distributors.
Without something saying that NASA bought directly from infineon:
1. It's not obvious how they would know who they sold to.
2. It's not obvious how they could get the information out beyond how they usually do it - issuing erratum notices.
Honestly, it feels like the article goes out of its way to try to imply Infineon should have notified NASA, but gives no data to suggest it had any idea at all what was going on.
If they had data that infineon and NASA had a contract, they would have put it in the article and used much stronger language. All these contracts would be public and are easy to find.
The fact that they don't have anything in the article about this suggests the contracts don't exist, and as usual, they are just using implication instead.
Rad hard parts are basically never sold through distributors. Strict lot traceability is a requirement on space programs (to avoid the issue discussed in the article). The quality departments at the manufacturer and buyer also need to communicate a whole bunch of stuff (requirements, test reports, etc) which defeats the purpose of the insulating layer of a distributor. Also, while these parts are expensive (my rule of thumb is to add 2-3 zeros to the cost of a commercial part to estimate the cost of a rad hard version), they are low volume, so there's not a whole lot in it for a distributor. The contractor working on the electronics almost certainly purchased these parts directly from Infineon, and Infineon would have had records of who purchased parts from which lot.
The fact that they found out about this accidentally at a conference is, all by itself, extremely strong evidence that Infineon didn't notify whoever they should have for the Europa Clipper mission, whether that was NASA itself, an in-house contractor or an external subcontractor.
Other articles[1][2] mention that the transistors came from International Rectifier which was bought by Infineon ten years ago. Maybe Infineon wasn't aware because NASA acquired the transistors through their IR subsidiary. IR provided transistors for the JWST and even for Hubble[3], so they probably were NASAs go-to supplier for this kind of hardware.
"They might not have "known", but come on, you're selling radiation-hardened chips to NASA. "
But do people ever actually "invoice NASA" for components. It was probably one of 100 different sub contractors building the actual circuits to NASA specifications, i.e. it was lower in the chain rather than NASA itself.
(Doesnt excuse the non-disclosure to those subcontractors)
>But do people ever actually "invoice NASA" for components
Yes, absolutely they do. I'm not a part of this mission, but I'm currently working on another NASA spacecraft mission. I don't know the percentages off hand, but a substantial portion of our spacecraft is built in house with parts purchased directly by NASA from the manufacturer.
Regardless, there are lines of communication to subcontractors. The mere fact that they found out about this at a conference is significant evidence that Infineon didn't notify who they should have.
Off-topic, but when components are sourced directly from the manufacturer do you have to buy in bulk? I figured you didn't just go on Mouser or DigiKey, but I would think manufacturers don't like dealing in small amounts.
For spacecraft parts, they absolutely don't mind (they're charging for the privilege of course). For the parts I'm familiar with, we generally buy both the necessary flight-rated components (both enough to build the vehicle and some number of spares) and a number of unrated components used in various test apparatuses in a single order. Once you get down to the level of stuff that's not even a flight-test fixture, we can indeed source parts from pretty much wherever. The biggest issue then become US government procurement rules that require us to buy American, but I'm pretty sure I've seen at least Mouser get used before.
They might not have "known", but come on, you're selling radiation-hardened chips to NASA. You can sure make an educated guess that they might be used for a probe.
I'm guessing there's a clause missing in the contract that says Infineon must disclose all known problems to NASA regardless of how the chips will be used.
Regardless, there are some people at NASA to whom 'Infineon' is now a curse word.