SPHERICAL and NLR were selected for funding through the Holland High Tech MKB Defensie Call 2025 for the RASSS project. Last week, was formally recognised during the award ceremony, where the award was presented on stage by the State Secretary for Defence alongside the other selected projects.

Roughly 50% of radiation-hardened chips in European satellites come from non-European suppliers, predominantly US manufacturers subject to ITAR export controls. For commercial missions, this creates procurement friction; for defense missions, it is a structural vulnerability in the infrastructure that national security depends on.

The root cause is not a shortage of capability, but a design process problem. Radiation robustness is typically addressed late in chip development, after architecture decisions are already locked. Failures found during testing trigger costly redesigns rather than early corrections, stretching timelines across multiple years and compounding the dependency on established non-European suppliers. RASSS is designed to close this gap by shifting radiation considerations to the start of the design process.

The Grant

The HHT MKB Defensie Call 2025 grant, which consists of a partnership between Holland High Tech and the Ministries of Defence and Economic Affairs, provides critical funding for technologies aimed at mitigating strategic dependencies. SPHERICAL has been granted €450,000 for a 24-month industrial research initiative designed to resolve this dependency gap.

Project RASSS: Radiation Assured Semiconductors for Strategic Autonomy

RASSS develops a predictive, radiation-aware design workflow that moves radiation robustness to the first phase of chip architecture, before layout or fabrication decisions are made.

Using AI-assisted automation and proprietary design modules, the workflow translates system-level requirements directly into fabrication-ready, radiation-robust chip architectures. The target is at least a 30% reduction in design iterations compared to conventional approaches. The project relies exclusively on European partners for both chip design and fabrication, keeping the supply chain entirely within Europe.

The methodology is validated through a proof-of-concept test chip for Laser Satellite Communication (LSC) terminals. LSC systems require electronics that operate flawlessly in the radiation environments of low Earth orbit: high data rates, long operational lifetimes, and zero tolerance for single-event upsets mid-pass. A working LSC chip designed through the RASSS workflow is the clearest possible demonstration that the methodology produces hardware ready for operational missions.

The Consortium & Feedback Loop

Project RASSS is executed in collaboration with Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR). SPHERICAL leads semiconductor architecture and workflow development, while NLR leads radiation physics modeling and experimental validation.

NLR's validation covers three testing methods: Heavy ion testing simulates the high-energy cosmic rays responsible for single-event effects in orbit. Proton testing replicates the radiation environment of the Van Allen belts, relevant for satellites in low and medium Earth orbit. And Co-60 gamma testing measures total ionising dose effects over a simulated operational lifetime.

The critical feature in the collaboration is the feedback loop: NLR’s experimental data feeds directly back into SPHERICAL’s predictive tools, refining the correlation between modeled and measured performance with each cycle.

From Concept to Validated Capability

RASSS advances SPHERICAL from TRL 3–4 to TRL 5–6. In practical terms, this means the workflow moves from a conceptual methodology to a validated prototype in a relevant environment, backed by experimental data and ready for deployment on customer programs.

We are grateful to Holland High Tech for supporting this step towards a stronger European semiconductor and space ecosystem! Strategic autonomy in space starts with controlling the silicon.