Power electronics for the next century-first step

Preparations for the development of the next century power electronics started almost 3 years ago under the auspices of NASA/JPL´s New Millennium Program (NMP). Solicitation of product development ideas from the industry members to miniaturize the power electronics, during initial NMP workshops, resulted in conceiving a product which combined the enabling High Density Interconnect (HDI) and the Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) technologies to achieve the NMP objectives. An industry team was formed to develop a Power Actuation and Switching Module (PASM) which would quadruple the capability of such a module over the existing hybrid technology and enable the development of many other space power system modules such as the shunt regulator module, battery charger module, dc-dc converter module with the eventual goal of the entire Power conditioning, Management And Distribution (PMAD) system on a single slice. JPL´s decision to fly the PASM on Deep Space One (DS-1) as a Category 3 Experiment and quickly validate this technology provided additional impetus to this unique team of the industry and the government to bring this project to a successful end. This paper describes in detail the PASM development program including its electrical and mechanical design, and its integration and ongoing performance on DS-1. A road map for the future HDI based products is also included