Frontgrade's RadHard and HiRel Microelectronics Land on Mars Onboard NASA’s InSight

Cobham announced today that its Radiation-Hardened (RadHard) and High Reliability Microelectronics have touched down on NASA's InSight Mars Lander.

ARLINGTON, VA (December 13, 2018) – Cobham announced today that its Radiation-Hardened (RadHard) and High Reliability Microelectronics have touched down on Mars. NASA’s InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport), the world’s first outer space robotic explorer to study the interior of Mars, features a variety of Cobham products including analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), low voltage differential signaling (LVDS), operational amplifiers, voltage regulators, MIL-STD-533 transceivers and 12 different medium scale integrators (MSI) logic devices. Cobham’s products are designed in the Telemetry and Seismology Instruments and the Interface manager (ATSS unit) between all the instruments on the Mars Rover.

“Cobham is delighted to partner with NASA once again on this historic mission and congratulate them on InSight’s recent landing on Mars, which will provide vital information about the Red Planet as well as the early formation of the rocky planets in our inner solar system,” said Jill Kale, President, Cobham Advanced Electronics Solutions. “For over 30 years, Cobham’s RadHard and High Reliability Microelectronics solutions have engineered hundreds of space explorations due to their rich feature set and dependability.”

Launched in the spring, InSight traveled 301,223,981 miles through space to reach Mars on November 26, 2018. It will now begin its two year mission to uncover how a rocky body forms and evolves to become a planet by investigating the interior structure and composition of Mars (crust, mantle and core). The mission will also determine the rate of Martian tectonic activity and meteorite impacts. InSight will use cutting-edge instruments to cut deep beneath the surface of the planet to study the history of Mars and measure its vital signs by seismology, temperature (heat flow) and reflexes (precision tracking).

For more information about Cobham’s RadHard products, please visit www.cobham.com/HiRel.

About Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions

We provide critical solutions for communication on land, at sea, and in the air and space, by moving data through off-the-shelf and customized products and subsystems including RF, microwave, and high reliability microelectronics, antenna apertures and motion control solutions.

Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions supplies defense, aerospace, security, medical, and industrial markets.

Media Contact
Liz Ryan Sax
Frontgrade Technologies
+1 (719) 487-4259
press@frontgrade.com