Manassas made computers go where no man has before

BAE Systems makes computers that you can't get off the shelf, and then they put them on satellites for launch into space.

The international company, with a plant in Manassas that employees 390 people, recently sent its 500th computer on NASA's Kepler Mission, which will search 100,000 star systems in the Milky Way for habitable, earth-size planets, said Vic Scuderi, manager of satellite electronics for BAE Systems.

"It's actually going to go and stare at one part of the sky," Scuderi said. "These 100,000 stars are believed to have planets orbiting them. They're looking for planets that are earth-sized and are habitable, meaning water exits on them."

BAE Systems specializes in making "radiation-hardened" computers that withstand the rigors of space travel, thwart several kinds of space radiation and perform for years.

For the Kepler mission that launched in March, NASA chose BAE's RAD750 computer. The longevity of the RAD750 will allow the Kepler satellite the time it will need to search for the planets as they pass in front of distant stars and disrupt the light coming from those stars, Scuderi said.

"As planets cross in front of a star, that planet crossing actually disturbs the amount of photons that can be captured about that star," Scuderi said. "Kepler will be staring and watching for these dips in the light output of this star, or the sun, of this planet."

When it sees a dip, the Kepler will register and measure it at the same time it surveys the rest of the 100,000 stars.

Searching for planets isn't easy, Scuderi said.

"Finding the planets against these suns is comparable to finding a gnat walking across your headlight from three miles away," he said. "This is a very complex mission."

The computer will compile the information it gathers, hold on to it for a month then send the information back to earth, where people will analyze it, Scuderi said.

A redundant system of two RAD750s will allow the satellite to run on its own without orders from earth and power all of the computing needs of the spacecraft, Scuderi said.

Ian McDonald, director of advanced digital systems for BAE, said BAE Systems computers are all over the place in space, and people use them every day.

"When you sit at home and you're watching the football game being beamed in or you're watching something on HBO, you know that those signals are going through a satellite with our electronics."

BAE Systems computers were also a part of the Phoenix Mars Lander, two Mars Rovers and the Casini Deep Space Probe.

The company also provides computers for communications, navigation, missile defense and weather satellites, McDonald said.

"There is not a major player in space who does not use some semblance of our products," McDonald said.

Manassas Bureau Chief Keith Walker can be reached at 703-369-6751.