[bargl]

They probably also expect to learn something from the failure. If this is a more modern chip that is testing it's radiation hardening, this is a good place to put it in trial run. If it fails, they get new information, if it succeeds they now have a successful flight with it to Mars and some data.

It's a great 2 for 1 thing that NASA typically does. They'll win even when they fail because they learned something and they won't fail that way again.