Demonstration of Radiation Tolerant Memory Synchronization within a Reconfigurable Flight Computer - Montana NASA EPSCoR

2019-2021 - LaMeres

Demonstration of Radiation Tolerant Memory Synchronization within a Reconfigurable Flight Computer

Text: This project helped to mature a new type of space computer called “RadPC”. Space computers must operate in a harsh radiation environment that can lead to crashes and material degradation. Current solutions to this problem involve “hardening” the space computers by using special materials and design approaches. These hardening approaches are effective at combating the effect of radiation, but cause the rad-hard computers to be extremely expensive and lag the performance of terrestrial computers by about 20 years. RadPC takes a new approach to space computing by creating a computer architecture on a commercial programmable logic device that “expects” crashes to occur and is designed to recover as quickly as possible. This current NASA EPSCoR project funded a satellite demonstration of a portion of RadPC that specifically addressed radiation-induced faults in the memory system of a computer. The satellite, called RadSat-u, was put into orbit from the International Space Station in February 2, 2020. It was operated for about 18 months from the ground station at Montana State University where data was collected on how well the memory protection system worked.