LEON SPARC V8 processor successfully in orbit around Venus

The LEON SPARC V8 processor has for the first time reached another planet. Implemented in a Virtex FPGA, LEON controls the Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC) on board the Venus Express mission. The Venus Express probe has successfully entered an orbit around planet Venus, and the VMC camera has taken its first pictures of the planet.

More information, including pictures of Venus, is available from the web site of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research:

http://www.mps.mpg.de/en/projekte/venus-express/vmc/index.html

Also the Venus Express control computer is using a SPARC processor, the radiation-hard ERC32 (SPARC V7) from Atmel.

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