Proton Irradiation Testing at TRIUMF

 October 16, 2025

Author: Spencer Titcomb VA7YST

The  MARMOTSat team has just completed a radiation test campaign for electronics at the TRIUMF Proton Irradiation Facility in Vancouver, where select MARMOTSat subsystems, including the Modular CubeSat Radio,  were exposed to simulated space radiation conditions. The successful completion of this radiation test campaign marks a major step forward in validating the design of our hardware for reliable operation in the harsh environment of a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO).

Using TRIUMF’s focused proton beam, we were able to simulate a full mission’s worth of solar radiation within just a few hours for multiple subsystems, including both cumulative degradation from ionizing radiation, as well as adverse effects experienced from energetic heavy particles. This provided valuable insight into how our systems and radiation mitigation mechanisms respond to high-energy particle interactions and confirmed the sturdiness of our in-house designs.

Overall, the results were encouraging, as none of our in-house-built components showed any signs of critical failure, and all systems continued operating throughout testing. While some transient reboots were observed under higher exposure levels, every system was able to recover and resume basic operations, demonstrating strong fault tolerance and system resilience.

The only component to experience significant adverse effects from radiation was the off-the-shelf System on Module used for the payload, the AMD Kria K24. This failed as a result of a high current latch-up event.. To mitigate this for the flight revision of the hardware, we plan to incorporate radiation shielding using aluminum plating to protect this sensitive system, as well as include programmable current limiting on the EPS.

The data collected during this campaign will be used to directly improve MARMOTSat’s overall radiation tolerance ahead of launch. The team would like to thank TRIUMF for allowing in-kind access to the PIF, and the staff at TRIUMF for their support throughout the testing process. This completed testing marks another successful step toward flight readiness and the continued advancement of the MARMOTSat mission.