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In 1961 President John F Kennedy informed Congress that by the end of the 1960’s he wanted NASA to have landed a man on the Moon and returned him safely to earth. Unfortunately President Kennedy did not live to see his dream come true but on the 20th of July 1969, Apollo 11 duly landed 2 men on the moon and then returned them safely to earth a month later. Over the next 3 years another 5 Apollo missions landed a further 10 men on the moon; the six in total Apollo voyages put 12 men all up on the moon, a series of feats unequalled at that time. Fast forward to November 20th 1998 and the core component of the International Space Station was launched off to start its ceaseless orbits around the earth. The International Space Station has taken the space mission a giant step past simply walking on the moon, and allows people to live in space for long periods of time. Space programs like the International Space Station, and even the now ‘antique’ Apollo missions, require highly sophisticated equipment, much of it electronic. Electronic equipment that in turn requires equally as sophisticated components, like printed circuit boards (PCBs). These types of components, when designed for use in industries like space, aerospace, defence, air traffic control, telecommunications and medicine, often come under the heading of ‘mission critical’. Mission critical means that they must work reliably all the time, every time and cannot afford to fail – the failure of mission critical electronic components when you’re floating 250 miles above the earth for instance could easily spell disaster. In order to guarantee that the equipment and components used in their space programs can withstand the rigorous environments they are subjected to, NASA implemented a number of standards such as the NASA-STD-8739 Workmanship Standards series. Up until October 2011, when it was replaced by IPC J-STD-001ES, the workmanship standard for hand or wave soldered electrical assemblies used in mission critical and space flight applications was NASA 8739.3. However, it’s still very common to see many contract manufacturing services quoting this qualification as well as IPC J-STD-001ES when describing the standards to which their hand soldering technicians are trained. FastSMT is a NADCAP accredited contract manufacturing company owned by the Electronic Source Company that employs hand solderers who have been trained to the exacting standards of NASA 8739 and IPC J-STD-001ES. FastSMT itself holds ISO-9000, ISO 13485 and IPC-A-610 certification and ITAR registration. These qualifications ensure that the products and services they provide, from in-house design through to PCB assemblies, conformal coating, 5-6 Sigma processing, flying probe testing and more, comply with the exacting standards set down by these standards.
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NASA 8739, NASA 8739.3,
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