SAN DIEGO, Feb. 6, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Maxwell
Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: MXWL) supplied seven powerful single
board computers that are providing processing power for the
European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia satellite, which lifted off on
December 19, 2013, to survey more
than a billion stars and other celestial bodies to trace the origin
and evolution of the Milky Way galaxy.
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Gaia is a key European space mission financed and implemented by
ESA. Gaia was developed by European aerospace companies, with
Airbus Defence and Space France-based unit, formerly known as Astrium,
as prime contractor and payload supplier. Maxwell supplied the
computers through a $3 million
subcontract with Airbus Defence and Space's United Kingdom-based satellite unit, which
designed and manufactured Gaia's seven video processing units
(VPU).
The Maxwell SCS750 space computers, which are incorporated into
Gaia's VPUs, are operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week to
process images and data gathered by the two-ton satellite's two
telescopes and billion-pixel digital camera. The massive volume of
data that will be collected during the five-year ESA mission and
the precision of the imaging instrumentation will enable scientists
to create a three-dimensional map of the galaxy and study its
formation with unprecedented detail and accuracy.
Peter Bennie, Airbus Defence and
Space's project team leader, said, "the satellite will observe and
record the motion, brightness, temperature and composition of a
billion or more stars 70 times each over the life of the mission.
After our exhaustive evaluation of available space-qualified
computers we determined that Maxwell's SCS750 was the only single
board computer that could meet both our video processing
requirements and Gaia's power and mass constraints."
The satellite was launched into an orbit at Lagrange point 2,
which is 1.5 million kilometers (932,000 miles) into space on the
"night side" of the Earth so that it is shielded from glare from
the Earth, sun and moon that otherwise would interfere with image
and data collection. ESA officials expect the information gathered
by the Gaia mission to have an impact on astronomy comparable to
that of weather satellites to meteorology or genome mapping to the
study of genetics.
Proprietary component shielding technology and system-level
architecture enable Maxwell's SCS750 to withstand the effects of
environmental radiation encountered in space to provide the most
reliable space computer currently available. It is based on a
"triple modular redundancy architecture in which three commercial
IBM PowerPC 750® processors run the same program at all times and
"vote" on each operation. If one of the processors suffers a
radiation-induced upset and disagrees with the other two, the
system is automatically resynchronized and resumes error-free
operation.
About ESA: The European Space Agency (ESA) is
Europe's gateway to space. It is
an inter-governmental organization, created in 1975, with the
mission to shape the development of Europe's space capability and ensure that
investment in space delivers benefits to the citizens of
Europe and the world.
About Airbus Defence and Space: Airbus Defence and Space
is Europe's No.1 defense and space
company. Worldwide, it ranks second for space and is among the top
ten defense companies, with revenues of approximately €14 billion
per year.
About Maxwell: Maxwell Technologies is a global leader in
the development and manufacture of innovative, cost-effective
energy storage and power delivery solutions. Our ultracapacitor
products provide safe and reliable power solutions for applications
in consumer and industrial electronics, transportation and
telecommunications. Our CONDIS® high-voltage grading and coupling
capacitors help to ensure the safety and reliability of electric
utility infrastructure and other applications involving transport,
distribution and measurement of high-voltage electrical energy. Our
radiation-mitigated microelectronic products include power modules,
memory modules and single board computers that incorporate powerful
commercial silicon for superior performance and high reliability in
aerospace applications. For more information visit
www.maxwell.com.
Contacts:
Media: Rachel Sullivan,
Metis Communications: +1 (617) 236-0500; maxwell@metiscomm.com
Investor: Michael Sund: +1
(858) 503-3233; msund@maxwell.com
Sales/Technical: Michael
Dowd: +1(858) 503-3327; mdowd@maxwell.com
SOURCE Maxwell Technologies, Inc.