News Release from: TES
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 11 October 2005

S-band radio transceiver makes an impact

TES Electronics Solutions made a significant contribution to NASA's Deep Impact comet probe programme, which successfully collided a spacecraft with the Tempel 1 comet in July.

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TES Electronics Solutions made a significant contribution to NASA's Deep Impact comet probe programme, which successfully collided a spacecraft with the Tempel 1 comet in July. The RF Division of TES, based in Chateaubourg, France, delivered the S-band radio transceiver linking the two components of the space vehicles during the final most critical phase of the programme. The radio module was designed, manufactured and tested at the Chateaubourg site, to meet the extremely demanding requirements set by space applications.

A total of 25 similar devices have now been successfully deployed on space missions It is a measure of the quality of this capability that enabled the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the USA to select TES as a supplier of this mission-critical system.

The Deep Impact probe was formed from two components of a single spacecraft launched from earth 173 days before the collision.

During the first phase of the project the two components - the flyby observation craft and the suicidal 'impactor' - travelled as one unit for the 268 million mile journey from earth.

24 hours before the collision with the comet, the two spacecraft separated, with the flyby craft taking a safe trajectory to position it 500km from the comet at the moment of impact.

It was during this separated phase that the TES radio module provided the communications link between the two spacecraft, enabling navigational corrections to be carried out until just two minutes before impact.

The entire mission was a complete success, with the impactor hitting the comet precisely as planned.

This enabled the flyby cameras to record an astonishing view of the impact, allowing scientists to extract information about the structure and materials within the comet's core.

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