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T0233-B

RadPC@scale - Suborbital Flight Demonstration of a Radiation Tolerant Computer System at-Scale

PI: Brock LaMeres, Montana State University - Bozeman

This full-scale Radiation-Tolerant Computer System (RadPC) is designed to dynamically recover when exposed to ionizing radiation. Based on commercial off-the-shelf field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), the RadPC has a redundant core architecture that replaces faulted processors in real time. Background memory scrubbing and error correction codes further ensure the computer withstands the effects of radiation. If successful, this technology will provide high reliability along with high performance, enabling real-time computing for space science and exploration missions.

RadPC: A Novel Single-Event Upset Mitigation Strategy for Field Programmable Gate Array–Based Space Computing (April 2021)

Overview of the Upcoming RadPC-Lunar Mission (March 2021)

Technology Areas (?)
  • TA04 Robotics, Tele-Robotics and Autonomous Systems
  • TA11 Modeling, Simulation, Information Technology and Processing
Problem Statement

Future space science and exploration will rely heavily on real-time computation. While off-the-shelf computers provide the needed performance and cost-point, they cannot operate in space due to the effects of ionizing radiation. A suborbital flight demonstration will test the operation of the full system in a space environment. Tests will include running flight software to stress the system computationally as well as expanding the memory protection technique to large arrays of storage.

Technology Maturation

Prior subsystems have been demonstrated at TRL 6, but the at-scale version has not been tested in a space environment. A full system demonstration will achieve TRL 7.

This work is a continuation of previous flight testing under T0088.

Future Customers

• Computation needed for autonomy in space exploration
• Science missions requiring real-time data processing

Technology Details

  • Selection Date
    TechFlights19 (Oct 2019)
  • Program Status
    Active
  • Current TRL (?)
    Unknown
    Successful FOP Flights
  • 2 Balloon

Development Team

Web Accessibility and Privacy Notices Curator: Alexander van Dijk Responsible NASA Official: Stephan Ord Last Update: November 16, 2018