News & Press Cuttings
Durham University Spinout 'Kromek' Provides Chip for Mars Radiation Detector
(16 August 2012)
Harry Whitver's Illustration of Curiosity on Mars
Following the successful landing of Curiosity on Sunday evening, technology from California-based NOVA Inc. will be deployed on Mars.
The technology is part of the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD), which will measure radiation doses on the planet for the first time.
NOVA Inc., part of UK-based Kromek, designed a chip for RAD that comprises part of the functional electronics of the RAD system. The RAD instrument (Dr. Don Hassler, PI) is built by Southwest Research Institute, together with Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany, with funding from the NASA Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate and Germany’s national aerospace research center, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt.
The Mars Science Laboratory is a project of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech. The mission's rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
