Total Ionizing Dose Radiation Testing of NVIDIA Jetson Nano GPUs

Abstract

On-board electronics for small satellites can achiew high performance and power efficiency by using state-of-the-art commercial processors such as graphical processing units (GPUs). However, because commercial GPUs are not designed to operate in a space environment, they must be evaluated to determine their tolerance to radiation effects including Total Ionizing Dose (TID). In this research, TID radiation testing is performed on NVIDIA Jetson Nano GPUs using the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's Cobalt-60 panoramic irradiator. Preliminary results suggest operation beyond20 krad(Si), which is sufficient radiation tolerance for short duration small satellite missions.