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Microsemi Aboard NASA Spacecraft for Pluto Mission

Aliso Viejo-based chipmaker Microsemi Corp. has supplied several key components on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which was sent in part to study Pluto in a mission launched nearly a decade ago from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The products include power supplies, electromechanical latching relays to control circuits, several Joint Army-Navy Space class diodes and transistors, measurement units for navigation, and field programmable gate arrays, which are used in imaging cameras to provide high-resolution images of the dwarf planet that orbits the sun once every 248 earth years and has never been closely explored.

“They’re supporting most, if not all, [of] the science instruments and some of the other broader health monitoring systems,” said Rob Warren, vice president and general manager of Microsemi’s space and power management group based in Garden Grove. “Very vital functions.”

Microsemi’s radiation-tolerant FPGAs, or super-speedy computing processing chips, have been used in missions to the moon, Mars, Venus, outer planets and several earth-orbiting satellites. The company’s legacy in the space industry dates back to 1957 through an aquisition; its micro-positioner relay was launched in the Atlas rocket. Its technology was deployed in numerous space missions over the following two decades in the Surveyor, Apollo and Saturn programs, the international space station program in the 1990s, and the Mars Rover, Mars Science Lab and Cygnus spacecraft initiatives of the past 15 years.

The company powered the mission computer on the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Shoemaker Satellite during its five-year mission and ultimate landing on the surface of the asteroid Eros, as well as the 10-year-long Rosetta spacecraft mission to examine Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The segment, which accounts for less than 3% of Microsemi’s $1.1 billion in annual sales, provided a foundation for the company to carve out more lucrative niches in defense and weapons systems, satellites, power management and other mission-critical applications.

“You’re talking about reliability and mission success, there’s nothing really more important,” Warren said. “You won’t get business if you’re not known for mission success.”

Diablo III

Blizzard Entertainment Inc.’s “Diablo III” is now among the top 10 selling video games of all time, with more than 30 million units sold.

The dark fantasy world game joins other illustrious and nostalgic titles in the top 10, including “Tetris,” “Minecraft,” “Wii Sports,” and “Super Mario Brothers.”

Diablo III sales got off to a sizzling start out of the gate, becoming the fastest-selling PC game in its first 24 hours on the market in May 2012 with some 3.5 million purchases. It was also the first Blizzard title geared for a console, the PlayStation, under a deal with Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. The game’s release in China last quarter helped fuel record revenue in that market and the company’s highest monthly active user base.

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