Renesas Electronics has announced that its radiation-hardened (rad-hard) integrated circuits are playing a crucial role in NASA’s Artemis II mission, which successfully lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 1. As the first crewed mission to orbit the Moon in decades, Artemis II marks a major milestone in NASA’s effort to return humans to the lunar surface and establish a lasting presence there.
Four astronauts are now making their journey around the Moon aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft taking humanity farther from Earth than we’ve ventured in more than fifty years. During this mission, the crew will put the spacecraft’s systems and technologies through rigorous testing in deep space before returning safely home.
The results will help validate Orion’s performance and readiness for future missions that include lunar landings.
Renesas’ rad-hard Intersil-branded ICs are embedded across multiple subsystems within Artemis?II’s core technologies, including the Orion capsule and the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.
These components are key to managing power distribution, maintaining signal integrity, and supporting onboard computing all under the harsh conditions of radiation and extreme temperature swings found in space.
The Intersil brand has deep roots in the space industry, dating back more than sixty years to the founding of Radiation Inc. in 1950. Since then, Intersil products have supported nearly every major satellite, shuttle launch, and deep-space exploration program.
Today, Renesas continues that legacy with its efficient, thermally optimized, and highly reliable Intersil-branded components that meet stringent SMD, MIL-STD-883, and MIL-PRF-38535 Class V/Q standards.
These rad-hard ICs are used in mission-critical applications ranging from data communications and power conditioning to telemetry, tracking, and control (TT&C) systems in defense and high-reliability space programs.
Leadership Comment
“Human space flight missions leave no margin for failure, and we’re proud to be one of the select few semiconductor companies entrusted to provide space-qualified technology for this historic crewed Artemis mission,” said Chris Stephens, Vice President of the HiRel Business Division at Renesas. “Our rad-hard devices help keep spacecraft systems connected, protected and precisely controlled, as crews venture into deep space. We look forward to supporting future landmark missions and ushering in the next era of solar system exploration with our spacegrade semiconductor solutions.”
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