NanoXplore and STMicroelectronics announced that NanoXplore’s NG-ULTRA radiation-hardened SoC FPGA has become the first product qualified to the new European ESCC 9030 standard for space applications.
The NG-ULTRA is designed specifically for space use, including low-Earth orbit (LEO) and medium-Earth orbit (MEO) constellations. It is intended for deployment in satellite equipment systems, with planned or potential use in flagship European missions such as Galileo, Copernicus, and IRIS².
The qualification covers a fully European Union-based supply chain, encompassing design, manufacturing, assembly, testing, and delivery, with STMicroelectronics handling delivery. NanoXplore maintains R&D and design centers in Paris, Grenoble, and Montpellier. STMicroelectronics contributes facilities including the Grenoble R&D and design center, the 300mm digital fab in Crolles, the space-specialist packaging site in Rennes, test and reliability sites in Grenoble and Agrate (Italy), and additional qualified sites in Europe.
The ESCC 9030 standard applies to high-performance microcircuits in flip-chip packages on organic substrate or plastic, offering reliability for space while moving away from heavier and more expensive traditional ceramic packages. This supports the requirements of New Space applications, including constellations and higher-volume missions.
NG-ULTRA targets functions such as on-board computers, data management and routing, image and video processing (real-time compression and encoding), Software Defined Radio (SDR) for remote communication mode updates, and onboard autonomy (detection, recognition, supervision). It enables edge computing in orbit to process more data directly and reduce transmission bottlenecks to ground stations.
The device is built on STMicroelectronics’ 28nm FD-SOI digital technology platform combined with advanced radiation hardening. It provides Total Ionizing Dose (TID) tolerance of up to 50 krad (Si), Single Event Latch-up (SEL) immunity up to 65 MeV·cm²/mg, and Single Event Upset (SEU) immunity validated for Linear Energy Transfer (LET) levels exceeding 60 MeV·cm²/mg.
NG-ULTRA features a quad-core Arm Cortex-R52 processor and offers 537k LUTs plus 32 Mb RAM. Its all-in-one SoC architecture integrates multi-core processing with programmable hardware on a single chip, reducing electronic board complexity, component count, latency, mass, and power consumption.
The SRAM-based design allows unlimited on-orbit reconfiguration, enabling post-launch updates, adaptation to new communication standards, or mission-phase optimization.
An evaluation kit is available as a prototyping platform to validate performance, interfaces, and reduce integration risks before flight-board production.
NanoXplore and STMicroelectronics stated that the ESCC 9030 qualification demonstrates European control over the complete production chain for advanced digital components suited to both deep-space and New Space constellations. The program received support from the European Space Agency (ESA), CNES, and the European Commission (DG-DEFIS).
