Product category:
Programmable Logic Devices
News Release from: Actel Europe | Subject: Rad-hard FPGAs
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 06 April 2006
Rad-hard FPGAs survive Martian missions
Actel's radiation-tolerant and radiation-hardened field-programmable gate arrays are still performing critical functions throughout several ongoing Mars missions.
Actel's radiation-tolerant and radiation-hardened field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are still performing critical functions throughout several ongoing Mars missions, including the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the Mars Express probe and the Mars Exploration Rovers - Spirit and Opportunity Used to enable cameras, radio communications, onboard instruments and relay stations, the Actel FPGAs have allowed scientists to capture and transmit astounding images of the planet's surface, including previously unexamined regions, such as the Connecticut-sized Gusev Crater
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 13 Jan 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
Related stories
Rad-hard FPGAs keep Mars Rovers running
Actel's radiation-tolerant and radiation-hardened FPGAs are continuing to perform critical functions in the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, after a year on the surface of Mars.
Development environment helps cut power
Enhancements enable easy comparisons of multiple design scenarios and their resulting power consumption and battery life implications.
"The use of Actel products in such extreme and critical conditions is a testament to the performance and high reliability of our technology", explained Ken O'Neill, Director of Military and Aerospace Product Marketing at Actel.
"Since the 1997 Mars Pathfinder mission, Actel has provided hundreds of FPGAs to various Mars missions to enable implementation of mission-critical digital logic functions aboard everything from launch vehicles to orbiters, landers and rovers".
"We are proud to continue to participate in the gathering of knowledge about the universe in which we live".
Further reading
Plug-in cards speed specific FPGA designs
HMI and miniature motor control daughtercards enable designers to shave months off of their design time and easily meet the most stringent power budgets.
FPGA family promises more for less
Low-power field-programmable gate arrays claim the industry's best power-, area-, logic- and feature-per-I/O ratios in a programmable device.
Actel's space-optimised FPGAs are repeatedly selected for mission-critical applications due to the inherent benefits of the company's nonvolatile products a high degree of tolerance for space radiation, proven reliability at extreme temperatures, and live at power-up functionality.
In addition, the single-chip devices reduce overall component count, thereby minimising power consumption and saving board space and weight.
On the MRO, Actel's RTSX-SU devices used are accumulating over 85,000 device hours per month, totalling over half a million device hours of reliable operation since mission launch in 2005.
Participating in the orbiter's goal to identify potential landing sites for future missions, the Actel FPGAs are used in several onboard instruments performing complex functions that deliver high-resolution images of the surface, subsurface and atmosphere of Mars.
A total of 56 Actel FPGAs have been used in the Mars Explorer Rover mission alone.
Some devices implement critical functions on the rover electronics modules and the lander electronics modules that are currently deployed on the surface of the planet, as well as on the cruise modules that were part of the propulsion systems to the planet.
Over the last decade, Actel FPGAs have been onboard more than 300 space programmes, including GPS, Echostar, International Space Station, Mars Pathfinder, Mars Explorer Rovers 1 and 2, Mars Express and the Hubble Space Telescope.
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