Radiation Tolerant, FPGA-based SmallSat Computer System (RadSat)

The goal of this project is to mature the technology readiness of a radiation tolerant smallsat computer system for a subsequent orbital flight demonstration. The system is implemented with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to provide space-computing performance that improves upon existing radiation hardened processors. Commercial FPGAs are now yielding acceptable levels of total ionizing dose immunity due to the thinning of gate oxides and relative deepening of isolation trenches. If a single event effect mitigation strategy can be implemented on COTS FPGAs, then reliable, high performance space computing can be accomplished at a fraction of the cost of existing radiation hardened processors.