Exxelia’s components onboard Perseverance rover

Exxelia, a leading manufacturer of complex passive components and sub-systems dedicated to harsh environments, is back on Mars onboard the Perseverance rover serving 3 key high-precision measuring and sampling instruments.

Exxelia is back on the Red Planet
After the InSight probe that landed on the Red Planet on November 26, 2018 with the high reliability specialist‘s film capacitors onboard, it is with the Perseverance robot that Exxelia proudly makes its return to Mars! At the end of a seven-month journey, NASA’s Perseverance robot landed on Mars on Feb 18 at 3:55pm EST with one mission: search for traces of ancient primitive life on the Red Planet.

A key mission requiring a perfect understanding of space missions
Strong of its 40+ years’ experience in space applications, Exxelia offers the most complete space qualified passive components product portfolio showing no less than 50 product series qualified to the stringent European Space Agency qualification procedures. Why? Because “we all know that when a product is in space, it can't be fixed! It has to work, and it has to work for 20 years! Our products are tested for 3 to 4 months, to be sure they will work perfectly. In total, the whole process from start to finish takes at least 16 to 20 weeks”, explains a senior VP at Exxelia

Where are Exxelia’s components?
Prior to answering this question, one has to know that the robot is equipped with seven highly complex measuring and sampling instruments. These tools will be acquiring information about Martian geology, atmosphere, environmental conditions, and potential bio signatures. Three of these tools, SuperCam, MEDA and PIXL, are served by Exxelia’s components:

• SuperCam is the laser-eye of Perseverance. Its objective is to characterize the rocks present on Martian soil by remote analysis.
• The Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA): It makes weather measurements including wind speed and direction temperature and humidity.
• PIXL is an X-Ray fluorescence spectrometer that detects and analyses chemical elements within the rocks and soil.

Find more about Exxelia’s journey on the Red Planet here.



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