OT: Flash memory problem on Spirit?

[Bob]

This appears to be the latest thinking, from NASA.

Flash seems like it would be fairly susceptible to radiation.

Does anyone know if any other inter-planetary craft have utilized this
technology?

Bob

 

[rk]

In general, it turns out that the storage element in flash is reasonably
robust to radiation. The sensitive parts are often in the control areas or
temporary registers, where a single heavy ion can cause a lockup of internal
state machines or an "upset" in say an address or data holding register. In
some cases the lockups require a full power cycle to clear.

Bob wrote:

This appears to be the latest thinking, from NASA.

Flash seems like it would be fairly susceptible to radiation.

Does anyone know if any other inter-planetary craft have utilized this
technology?

--
rk, Just an OldEngineer
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
-- R. Feynman, Appendix F.