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Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, Inc (AMD) shared yesterday that its subsidiary Xilinx's field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are powering the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Space Shuttle and the Orion spacecraft. The two space vehicles are at the center of the space agency's Artemis program, which aims to land humans on the lunar surface. The Artemis 1 mission took off in mid November last year amidst much fanfare, and the Orion completed its maiden and uncrewed journey around the Moon before safely splashing down in the ocean.

AMD's announcement came after NASA revealed its crew for the Artemis 2 mission, which will be the first time that humans will fly to the Moon since the Apollo era. The company congratulated the four astronauts selected for the journey, as it shared that its equipment is present on both vehicles.

AMD Says Radiation Hardened FPGAs Power NASA's SLS Rocket and Orion Spacecraft

AMD acquired Xilinx early last year as part of a deal that took two years and had an estimated price tag of $60 billion. The deal had to clear multiple regulatory approvals before it was finalized, and it saw AMD diversify its product lineup from primarily designing and selling central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) to also gain a foothold in the FPGA sector - where its larger rival Intel primarily dominates.

Unlike a CPU or GPU, which is programmed to executive specific tasks before being released to the customer, an FPGA is a customizable circuit configured individually by its user, depending on the use case. These make it suitable for unique uses cases such as those on the Orion and the SLS, and it seems that it's AMD instead of Intel, which was the pick of choice by NASA contractors for their spacecraft.

Teams 'flip' the Artemis 2 mission's SLS' rocket's engine stage from vertical to horizontal as part of preparations to integrate it with the core stage. Image: NASA/Isaac Watson

Boeing primarily manufactures the SLS rocket, while NASA's lead contractor for the Orion is Lockheed Martin. The spacecraft is made of two parts, with Lockheed responsible for making the crew section. Orion's second portion, namely the part with its solar panels, is made by the European Space Agency (ESA).

The journey to and from the Moon takes place in a harsh environment. This includes the harsh Van Allen radiation belts, which start from roughly 600 kilometers and reach 60,000 kilometers from the Earth's surface. These require any equipment on spaceships to be radiation hardened, especially those similar to the Orion, which actually end up traveling far beyond the Earth. On the other hand, rockets like the SLS do not fly in space since their primary job is pushing spaceships out of Earth's gravity.

AMD confirmed that its products are also radiation hardened but provided few additional details about them. This is not the first time the chip designer has boasted about its presence in the space program, with another announcement coming soon after NASA launched the SLS rocket in November. Boeing is responsible for making the SLS's processors, and these are a 'triple redundant' system which sees three computers individually compute instructions before sharing the results with each other to ensure that they have the correct output.