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Satnews Daily
March 15th, 2017

What's on NEXT? Ask Cobham and Their Space Grade Products Aboard Iridium's NEXT


Cobham’s products—antennas, motion control solutions, and RadHard microelectronics and services—contributed to the successful orbital deployment of Iridium NEXT satellites. Iridium NEXT is the company's next-generation satellite constellation which replaces and enhances Iridium’s existing network of low-Earth orbit satellites. 

Other Cobham products on Iridium NEXT include motion control solutions, actuators for the solar array drive, and solar array second axis, while flat plate antennas are used for the inter-satellite links, providing communications between satellites of the Iridium NEXT constellation.

Jeff Hassannia, Senior Vice-President of Business Development and Technology said that Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions is proud to contribute to the next generation of commercial telecommunication space satellites. He continued explaining that the breadth of their offerings enable key aspects of spacecraft, including: robust and reliable motion control solutions, RadHard  microelectronic solutions, and antennas. Their continuing technology investments in these areas demonstrate our commitment to the success of our customers in this market.”

Cobham RadHard microelectronics contributing to Iridium NEXT include: power supply solutions

  • Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA)
  • LEON microprocessors and intellectual property
  • SpaceWire transceivers
  • 1553 transceivers
  • NOR flash and SDRAM memories
  • clock drivers
  • MSI Logic

 

Additionally, four separate Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) perform control and data switching for various aspects of Iridium NEXT.

http://www.cobham.com/space