NASA Selects Jazz Semiconductor and ADSANTEC for Lunar Atmosphere and
Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) Mission

SiGe technology from Jazz combined with rad-hard design techniques from ADSANTEC enabling
essential space applications

RANCHO PALOS VERDES and NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., October 15, 2009 – Jazz Semiconductor, a Tower Group Company (Nasdaq: TSEM, TASE: TASE: TSEM) and ADSANTEC, a fabless design house, today announced their SERDES solution has been selected by NASA for its Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission. The LADEE mission will orbit the Moon with the main objective of characterizing the lunar dust environment to determine the global density, composition, and time variability of the fragile lunar atmosphere before it is perturbed by further human activity and will deliver optical data at a rate of above 500 Mb/s. The launch date for the mission is scheduled for May 1, 2012.

ADSANTEC specializes in ASICs in CMOS and SiGe BiCMOS technologies utilizing patented and patent pending radiation-hard by design (RHBD) techniques. The ADSANTEC Ultra High Speed (above 30 Gb/s) rad-hard SERDES product utilizes the commercially available SiGe BiCMOS process (SBC18) from Jazz along with its own patent pending RHBD systems. Jazz and ADSANTEC’s technology solution was chosen for the LADEE mission by MIT as well as for a next generation mission to Mars by JPL. ADSANTEC has developed and validated more than 30 high speed RHBD ASICs fabricated in Jazz’s SBC18 process technology, including an ultra high speed TIA and VCSEL driver. To accelerate rad-hard ASIC design, ADSANTEC has developed a library of rad-hard silicon verified cells, which are available from Jazz Semiconductor.

“We have routinely achieved first-pass success with Jazz’s industry-leading SiGe technology in delivering high speed ASICS with demanding specifications targeting both space and terrestrial applications,” said Dr. Vladimir Katzman, President of ADSANTEC. “We are now excited to further broaden our partnership with Jazz by making our rad-hard and commercial grade design libraries available to other Jazz customers.” Currently, ADSANTEC supplies components fabricated in Jazz Semiconductor’s process technologies to several tier 1 communications customers worldwide.

“We are excited to be partnering with ADSANTEC on the lunar mission as well as helping to expand our support of the rad-hard community with the addition of RHDB techniques and IP to our commercial wafer fabrication processes,” said Dr. Marco Racanelli, Sr. VP and GM, RF & HPA, and Aerospace & Defense Business Groups. “This, together with a broad selection of 0.18um CMOS and SiGe technology options, our previously announced cryogenic device models and monthly direct-shuttle program, will help speed time-to-market for customers targeting new products at space and other high radiation environments.”

More information about the LADEE mission can be found on the NASA website at http://nasascience.nasa.gov/missions/ladee.