Yes, often its the packaging of the regulator that shrinks a bit around the
legs, and then thermal cycling eventually breaks the internal contact now
that movement is possible. I even had some ordinary Silicon diodes go
intermittent due to this some years ago when I could see.
Dis similar materials and heat cycling are not the best bedfellows.
Brian

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From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"David Spain" wrote in message
...
On Friday, April 18, 2014 12:53:57 PM UTC-4, David Spain wrote:
That is not to say of course that it will never fail. According to the
writeup in NASASpaceFlight.com this particular unit is 13 years old
having been brought up with the S0 Truss on STS-110 in April 2002.


Also given the nature of the failure, that power consumption dropped from
a nominal 55W to 33W, I'm willing to speculate a voltage rail has gone
down, possibly from a Point-Of-Load regulator failure. I've seen my share
of these go bad in the day....

Dave