Spacecraft Communications

Mission Experience

L3Harris has a vast and diverse history in spacecraft communications. For 20 years, every U.S. Mars rover and orbiting spacecraft mission have used L3Harris transceivers - including the Electra-Lite and Electra on both the current Perseverance lander and orbiting spacecraft respectively. L3Harris also provides the radio for NASA’s Common Communications for Visiting Vehicles (C2V2) program for the ISS. C2V2 is a program designed to provide standardized communications between the ISS and docking vehicles. The system is secure and provides reliable communications with commercial crew and other visiting vehicles. It is available for all phases of rendezvous, docking and mated operations.

Satellite over Earth. Image credit: NASA

Image Gallery

An illustration of NASA's Perseverance rover landing safely on Mars. CREDIT: NASA

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has selected L3Harris Technologies to provide the latest Universal Space Transponder (UST) for the Mars Sample Return program

Orbital ATK's Cygnus spacecraft as it approached the International Space Station. Credit: ESA/NASA

An illustration of the Mars rovers

An illustration of NASA's Perseverance rover landing safely on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The illustration shows a concept for a set of future robots working together to ferry back samples from the surface of Mars collected by NASA's Mars Perseverance rover. Credit: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech

spacecraft as it approached the International Space Station. Credit: ESA/NASA

Related Capabilities

Mars Electra-lite UHF Transceiver

The C/TT-510 Electra-lite Transceiver is flexible enough in its design to accommodate many mission scenarios where data links are required between two spacecraft.