The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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A close-up of the next-generation microprocessor that will serve a wide variety of future space missions.
Standard terrestrial chips wouldn’t last very long in orbit under the harsh blast of space radiation. So ESA has had a long history of working with industry on specially ‘rad-hardened’ designs for space.
This GR740 microprocessor, developed by Cobham Gaisler in Sweden and manufactured by France-based STMicroelectronics, is a quadcore design combining four embedded LEON4 cores. The LEON4 is the latest member of a series of chips that began with the LEON2-FT, developed at ESA from the second half of the 1990s.
For more information on the device and ESA’s role in microprocessor development, watch our video interview with ESA microelectronics engineer Roland Weigand.