MALTA — You just don’t make spaceships overnight. And you definitely don’t make the computer chips that power those spaceships overnight.
That’s why it was a significant development when BAE Systems announced that week that GlobalFoundries has developed radiation-hardened chips for the company.
And it all happened while GlobalFoundries moved production from East Fishkill to Saratoga County.
BAE Systems announced June 25 that it has tested its new Endura space chip system and found it “to operate resiliently in natural space and the most severe strategic radiation environments.”
That’s a huge boost for GlobalFoundries, which makes the central processor used by BAE Systems in the Endura and previous versions of its main radiation-hardened system-on-a-chip.
The U.S. Department of Defense gave GlobalFoundries a $117 million grant in 2022 (and $8 million previously) to move production from its former Fab 10 in East Fishkill to its more modern factory in Malta, where GlobalFoundries is increasingly making chips for the aerospace industry, including defense contractors.
The terms of the BAE Systems chipmaking deal with GlobalFoundries were not disclosed. BAE Systems had more than $37 billion in revenue in 2025. GlobalFoundries had $1.83 billion in revenue during that same year. The chipmaker now counts four of the top five defense contractors as clients.
“This milestone positions the Endura (chip) as a leading high-performance processor for the space community,” Joe Dziezynski, Space Systems product line director at BAE Systems said in a prepared statement. “Leveraging commercial foundry technology, Endura delivers a smaller, lower-power and more cost-effective solution for missions requiring survivability in harsh radiation.”
BAE Systems supplied chips in the past to the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers with a previous-generation chip.
James Schlett, director of research and communications at the Center for Economic Growth in Colonie, said that the Capital Region is growing its aerospace semiconductor manufacturing capabilities.
Schlett monitors the semiconductor industry in the Capital Region closely. He said GlobalFoundries and NY Creates, the nonprofit that operates the Albany NanoTech complex, have led the charge.
“The Capital Region is well on its way to becoming a space hub for microelectronics,” Schlett told the Times Union. “The Endura radiation-hardened processor helped put the region on that trajectory five years ago when GlobalFoundries and BAE announced their collaboration.”
That transfer of the tech from East Fishkill to Malta also paid dividends to GlobalFoundries in Saratoga County because the 45 nanometer silicon-on-insulator process is also ideal for the company’s artificial intelligence customers.
“GlobalFoundries’ facility in Malta, New York, is a cornerstone of trusted U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, providing the secure, domestic foundational technologies needed for mission-critical aerospace and defense applications,” Ezra Hall, senior director of aerospace and defense at GlobalFoundries, said in a statement.
Schlett said the Endura still must be qualified by the federal Defense Logistics Agency before it can be used in national security satellites, although that is expected later this year. Officials with BAE and GlobalFoundries did not immediately respond to questions about that qualification process.