How The 2022 CEZ Event Shows The Fragility of Environmental Sensors in High-Risk Areas

A monitoring station as set up in the CEZ, featuring both the legacy (ARMS) and new wireless monitoring system.

In what reads somewhat like a convoluted detective story, the events unfolding at the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) in Ukraine during late February had the media channels lighting up with …read more Continue reading How The 2022 CEZ Event Shows The Fragility of Environmental Sensors in High-Risk Areas

Lessons Learned from a CubeSat Postmortem

On the 3rd of June 2019, a 1U CubeSat developed by students of the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków was released from the International Space Station. Within a few hours it was clear something was wrong, and by July 30th, the satellite was barely functional. A number …read more

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Circuit VR: Redundant Flip Flops and Voting Logic

We are somewhat spoiled because electronics today are very reliable compared to even a few decades ago. Most modern electronics obey the bathtub curve. If they don’t fail right away, they won’t fail for a very long time, in all likelihood. However, there are a few cases where that’s not a good enough answer. One is when something really important is at stake — the control systems of an airplane, for example. The other is when you are in an environment that might cause failures. In those cases — near a nuclear reactor or space, for example, you often are …read more

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