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Actel Congratulates NASA LRO and LCROSS Teams on Successful Insertion Into Operational Orbit and Returning Lunar Images

Posted on: Tuesday, 21 July 2009, 07:00 CDT

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Actel Corporation (Nasdaq: ACTL) today extended its congratulations to the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) teams for successfully reaching lunar orbit and returning the first images of the moon from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). Actel's radiation-tolerant RTAX-S field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are aboard and performing critical functions for the LRO and LCROSS spacecrafts, which will return more data about the moon than any previous mission. Both missions are critical parts of NASA's investigations to prepare and support future human exploration to the moon, gathering crucial data on the lunar environment that will help astronauts prepare for long-duration lunar expeditions.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090721/SF49265)

The LRO mission represents the first documented space-flight heritage of Actel's high-density 624-pin Ceramic Column Grid Array (CCGA) package, while LCROSS has been preceded by no fewer than seven other missions that are using Actel's industry-leading RTAX-S space-flight FPGAs in conventional Ceramic Quad Flat-Pack (CQFP) packaging. Actel RTAX-S space-flight FPGAs have the performance, capacity and radiation tolerance required to reliably and successfully perform critical tasks on key scientific, commercial and military space missions.

Actel's RTAX-S Family Without Equal for Mission-Critical Space Applications

The Actel RTAX-S FPGA family consists of devices ranging in density from 250,000 to 4 million equivalent system gates. The family, which includes the RTAX2000S FPGAs used in the LRO mission, offers unique features desirable for space-flight applications, including single-event upset (SEU)-hardened flip-flops, usable error-corrected on-board memory and a large number of user I/O. These features, in combination with the inherent single-chip and instant operation benefits of Actel's nonvolatile products, give designers the ability to minimize power consumption, reduce component count and save board space and weight while meeting their density, performance and radiation-resistance requirements. Over the last decade, Actel FPGAs have been onboard more than 100 launches and flown on over 300 satellites and spacecrafts.

For more information on RTAX-S/SL FPGAs: http://www.actel.com/products/milaero/rtaxs/default.aspx

About Actel

Actel is the leader in low-power FPGAs and mixed-signal FPGAs, offering the most comprehensive portfolio of system and power management solutions. Power Matters. Learn more at www.actel.com.

The Actel name and logo and Actel Fusion are registered trademarks of Actel Corporation. The Pigeon Point name and the stylized lighthouse logo are trademarks of Pigeon Point Systems. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Actel Corporation

Source: PR Newswire

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