The reliability considerations of a complete product should be covered by all three aspects of packaging, parts, and radiation.  Various high temperature harsh environment microsystems needed for NASA missions should also be validated/evaluated as individual parts as these parts approach application.  SiC has a wide energy bandgap so this material has very good resistance to radiation, and therefore, SiC microsystems are very suitable for space applications.  This indicates that radiation related reliability should also be considered later for SiC products.  However, as discussed earlier, a high temperature packaging technology is essential for testing high temperature devices.  Gold thin-film coated tungsten ‘high temperature’ probe tips fail at 450^oC, so electronic devices can not be long-term tested at the wafer level using conventional probe stations.  Therefore, high temperature testing of microsystems is not possible without an appropriate package.  This indicates the critical role and the importance of high temperature operable packaging technology to infuse SiC high temperature harsh environment microsystem technology into NASA missions.