Communicating Across Space With Qorvo:
Saturn Cassini-Huygens & Mars Spirit and Opportunity
When a spacecraft travels millions of miles and performs some of the most advanced exploration in history, we want to know what it has discovered. Sending communications from this distance requires the highest-performing components. The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft was launched toward Saturn in 1997 — a cooperative mission of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
Qorvo Communicates From Saturn's Moon, Titan
The Cassini-Huygens probe included crucial equipment designed to communicate with the spacecraft throughout its mission to the surface of Saturn's moon, Titan. Qorvo's gallium arsenide (GaAs) technology was at the heart of the connection that sent the findings back to Earth.
The Cassini mission has sent a wealth of data about Saturn's system back to scientists across the Earth. Information collected by the Huygens probe about Titan, one of the only known moons in our solar system with an atmosphere, included details about its lakes of hydrocarbons. Titan's environment resembles what the scientific community believes once existed on a primordial Earth. The data collected helps scientists explore secrets of how the solar system formed and how it continues to evolve.
From Saturn to Mars
A few years later, Mars was the destination of two NASA rovers, the Spirit and Opportunity, also equipped with Qorvo GaAs amplifiers. The rovers arrived in 2004 and, through a combination of superior design and interplanetary ingenuity, Spirit continued to operate and communicate with Earth until 2010. Its sister probe, Opportunity, which operated well into 2018, sent data to scientists across the globe.
We're proud that our space-qualified technology is part of these exploratory missions, sending data to the global scientific community. Qorvo components offer the type of rugged dependability necessary for the inherently challenging conditions of space exploration and, most importantly, communications back to Earth.
