Renesas’ rad‑hard ICs take flight on NASA’s Artemis II crewed lunar mission
Renesas has announced its radiation‑hardened (rad-hard) ICs are being used in NASA’s Artemis II mission, which successfully launched from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on April 1. The first crewed mission around the moon in decades, Artemis II represents a major milestone in NASA’s plans to return humans to the moon and establish a long-term presence on the lunar surface.
Four astronauts are now en route to orbit the moon aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft as part of NASA’s Artemis II mission, taking humans farther from Earth than they have traveled in over fifty years. During the flight, the crew will test spacecraft systems and crew performance in this deep‑space environment before returning safely home. The mission will validate key spacecraft capabilities and position Orion for future crewed journeys and lunar landings.
Within the Artemis II core systems, including the Orion capsule and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, Renesas rad-hard ICs are used across multiple subsystems. These Intersil-branded devices are embedded in the space vehicle’s avionics and safety launch system, helping to regulate and distribute power, maintain signal integrity and support onboard computing. These specialised ICs are built to operate reliably when exposed to the elevated levels of radiation and extreme temperatures that are typical of human space missions.
Renesas delivers efficient, thermally-optimised and highly-reliable SMD, MIL-STD-883 and MIL-PRF 38535 Class-V/Q Intersil-branded products for the defense, high-reliability (Hi-Rel), and rad-hard space markets. The rad-hard ICs support subsystems for mission critical applications in data communications transfer, power supplies and power conditioning, general protection circuitry, and telemetry, tracking and control (TT&C).
