ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how NASA has evaluated selected components to determine which components are excellent candidates for designers to use for equipment that must operate reliably for long periods of time under extreme operating temperatures with no or very little need of heating or cooling. It presents a compendium of some of the data gathered by the Extreme Temperature Electronics Group at NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) in Cleveland, Ohio. The GRC group sometimes evaluates silicon bipolar devices because there are missions that take place at intermediate low temperatures where such devices may function. The GRC Extreme Temperature Electronics Group has evaluated a few SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors, and has worked with a specific heterojunction bipolar transistors device in designing and building a potential motor controller/selector for the James Webb Space Telescope. In space applications, a low temperature of -185°C is usually considered to cover most of the equatorial regions of the planets through Saturn.
