A Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) -based, Radiation Tolerant, Reconfigurable Computer System with Real Time Fault Detection, Avoidance and Repair Testing

Future NASA missions will require increased on-board computing capability beyond what is available today. In addition, these computers will need to withstand the harsh radiation environment of space, which will lead to system failures if not mitigated. Montana State University’s Radiation Tolerant Computing System (RadSat) employs a field programmable gate array (FPGA) to implement a redundant, multi-tile computer system that has the ability to detect, avoid, and repair faulted regions of the device. Following successful suborbital flight demonstrations in 2014 and 2016, RadSat transitioned to EPSCoR funded orbital demonstration on the International Space Station (ISS) in December 2016 for one year of testing. The ISS demonstration evaluated RadSat’s resistance to the harmful effects of space radiation. The experiment was powered down in December 2017 and is scheduled to return to Earth in 2018 to be examined for radiation damage. Preliminary results show that the experiment ran for long durations (months at a time) without faults, achieving TRL 7. Although further analysis is needed, the demonstration provided the team with critical information about additional instrumentation needs.