BAE Systems RAD750 Space Computer Drives NASA's WISE

December 21, 2009

A BAE Systems space computer has taken flight on a NASA satellite that is creating an infrared map of the universe. The BAE Systems RAD750 computer processes data and performs other critical functions aboard NASA's WISE (Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer) satellite, built by Ball Aerospace and launched Dec. 14.

WISE artists Conception

The radiation-hardened computer processes large volumes of scientific data, manages the satellite's directional orientation, and runs the software that keeps the spacecraft in orbit. With more than 500 such systems now in orbit, BAE Systems is the world's leading provider of computers capable of withstanding the radiation, temperature, vibration, and other extremes encountered in space flight.

"The RAD750 computer will play a critical role in sending massive amounts of infrared data back to Earth," said Vic Scuderi, manager of satellite electronics at BAE Systems' specialty microelectronics foundry in Manassas, Virginia. "We share the scientific community's excitement over the WISE mission and its endless potential for scientific discovery."

WISE will produce a complete infrared map of the universe to enable scientists to see space objects that are not visible with most telescopes, such as asteroids and ultra-luminous galaxies. The 10-month mission will provide a map to guide future telescope missions such as NASA's James Webb Telescope, set to launch in 2014.

BAE Systems has been building radiation-hardened computers since the early 1990s. The latest version, the RAD750, was developed through a partnership among BAE Systems, the Air Force Research Laboratory, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

A Delta II rocket deposited WISE into a polar orbit 326 miles above Earth.

"WISE thundered overhead, lighting up the pre-dawn skies," said William Irace, the mission's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "All systems are looking good, and we are on our way to seeing the entire infrared sky better than ever before."

Engineers acquired a signal from the spacecraft via NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System just 10 seconds after the spacecraft separated from the rocket. Approximately three minutes later, WISE re-oriented itself with its solar panels facing the sun to generate its own power. The next major event occurred about 17 minutes later. Valves on the cryostat, a chamber of super-cold hydrogen ice that cools the WISE instrument, opened. Because the instrument sees the infrared, or heat, signatures of objects, it must be kept at chilly temperatures. Its coldest detectors are less than minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit.

"WISE needs to be colder than the objects it's observing," said Ned Wright of UCLA, the mission's principal investigator. "Now we're ready to see the infrared glow from hundreds of thousands of asteroids, and hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies."

With the spacecraft stable, cold and communicating with mission controllers at JPL, a month-long checkout and calibration is underway.

WISE will see the infrared colors of the whole sky with sensitivity and resolution far better than the last infrared sky survey, performed 26 years ago. The space telescope will spend nine months scanning the sky once, then one-half the sky a second time. The primary mission will end when WISE's frozen hydrogen runs out, about 10 months after launch.

Just about everything in the universe glows in infrared, which means the mission will catalog a variety of astronomical targets. Near-Earth asteroids, stars, planet-forming disks and distant galaxies all will be easy for the mission to see. Hundreds of millions of objects will populate the WISE atlas, providing astronomers and other space missions, such as NASA's planned James Webb Space Telescope, with a long-lasting infrared roadmap.

JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission was competitively selected under the Explorers Program, managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. NASA's Launch Services Program at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., managed the payload integration and the launch service.