Technology Infusion

Although he has waited nearly 10 years to witness his technology in action as New Horizons investigates the last known unexplored planetary body in the solar system, he already knows his microchips will work. The first indication came one year after launch during New Horizon’s Jupiter encounter. “PEPSSI collected excellent data,” Paschalidis said.

While New Horizons was racing across the solar system for its rendezvous with Pluto, Paschalidis was infusing the technology into many other instruments and missions. His microelectronic technology was used on NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, which studied the planet closest to the Sun — Mercury — and the Interstellar Boundary Explorer that probed the heliospheric boundary with the interstellar medium.

He also used a second-generation version of the technology on NASA’s JUNO mission, which is expected to reach Jupiter next summer, the now-operating Van Allen Probes, and the recently launched Magnetospheric Multiscale mission. Now under development, NASA’s Solar Probe and the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter missions also will fly the technology.

This great canyon system stretches more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) across the entire face of Charon and likely around onto Charon’s far side. Four times as long as the Grand Canyon, and twice as deep in places...