SpaceCube

SpaceCube is a family of high-performance reconfigurable systems designed for spaceflight applications requiring on-board processing. The SpaceCube was developed by engineers at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.[1] The SpaceCube 1.0 system is based on Xilinx's Virtex-4 commercial FPGAs. The debut mission of the SpaceCube 1.0, Hubble Servicing Mission 4, was the first time Xilinx's Virtex-4 FPGAs flew in space.[2]

The Hubble Space Telescope being lifted out of the payload bay of Atlantis before being released back into space.
SpaceCube aboard MISSE-7

Missions

Family overview

  • SpaceCube 1.0: Based on Xilinx's Virtex-4 commercial FPGAs.
  • SpaceCube 1.5: Intermediate version of SpaceCube 2.0. Based on Xilinx's Virtex-5 commercial FPGAs. Scheduled to fly on sounding rocket flight in the fall of 2010.[7]
  • SpaceCube 2.0: Currently under development with over $1 million in funding.[7] The SpaceCube 2.0 system is based around Xilinx's new radiation-hardened Virtex-5 FPGA.[7][8]

Awards

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center SpaceCube team earned an honorable mention for the 2009 "IRAD Innovator of the Year" award.[9]

On-board science data processing achievements

  • Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) results:
    • 6 to 1 loss-less data volume reduction on SAR Nadir Altimetry dataset.[10]
    • 165x data volume reduction on SAR mapping dataset.[10]

References

Media
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.