Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Tech Transfer
Rad-Hard Smallsat / CubeSat Avionics Board
Project Description
VORAGO will design a rad-hard Smallsat / CubeSat Avionics single board that has the necessary robustness needed for long duration missions in harsh mission environments. The board will exceed processing performance of 100 DMIPS and will include a rad-hard MCU and an FPGA to implement mission specific processing functions. I2C, CAN, SPI, and SpaceWire busses will be supported on-board along with four 8-10bit SERDES interfaces. On-board memory will include 16 MB of EDAC protected RAM, 4 GB of non-volatile memory storage and 256 kB of non-volatile memory for boot software. The board will accept and digitize 16 thermistor inputs and 8 active analog inputs. A watchdog timer and external reset signal will be provided on the board. The board will be no bigger than 90mm x 90mm and will be specified to consume no more than 3W. The deliverables for the project will include board schematics, bill of materials and costing, industry-standard deliverables for fabrication of the board, assembly and testing. In addition, a thorough component analysis will be reported including power consumption characteristics (to demonstrate that 3W will not be exceeded) and radiation performance specifications to ensure that the board has been designed to meet the objective of long duration missions in radiation environments. A board-level FMEA will be supplied as part of the deliverable and QML design practices will be followed and documented. In addition, a detailed list of software and hardware development tools for programming and developing command and data handling software will be supplied. Important software such as an RTOS will be supplied.
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Anticipated Benefits
This board design will be a suitable platform solution for many NASA Smallsat and CubeSat projects. The design will have the necessary processing performance and functionality that will allow flexibility to control and interface with different satellite subsystems. There will be a variety of different interface standards (for example, CAN and SpaceWire) along with general purpose I/O that ensure hardware flexibility in different systems. Different software can be easily uploaded to take advantage of the combination of microcontroller and FPGA. The entire bill of materials will be clearly specified for operation in radiation environments so that orbit and flight duration conditions can be estimated with confidence. Specifically, this board design could be used as the Command and Data Handling subsystem in nanosats, cubesats and smallsats. The board will support earth science observations, planetary science decadal survey priorities, planetary reconnaissance, space biology and technology transfer applications.
The Rad-hard Smallsat / CubeSat Avionics Board dimensions of 90mm x 90mm make it compatible with commercial CubeSat standards. There is currently no standard commercial CubeSat board that has been developed with the necessary robustness needed for long duration missions in harsh mission environments. The growth in commercial CubeSat developments is growing considerably and this development with VORAGO will address a TAM of several hundred CubeSat systems per year. Based on a market estimate with Pumpkin (the leading commercial CubeSat subsystem company), VORAGO believe that we could sell approximately 100 of these boards each year to commercial CubeSat developers, starting in 2018. The board will be designed to be fully compatible with commercial CubeSat standards to enable it to communicate seamlessly with all commercially available CubeSat subsystems (such as those available from different suppliers on the Pumpkin store). VORAGO have tentatively agreed with Pumpkin that the board will be sold on the Pumpkin web store to make it easy for commercial CubeSat developers to locate and buy it. Specifically, this board design could be used as the Command and Data Handling subsystem in different sized CubeSats (from 1U upwards) for any CubeSat application including exploration, imaging, communications, sensing and measurement missions. More »
The Rad-hard Smallsat / CubeSat Avionics Board dimensions of 90mm x 90mm make it compatible with commercial CubeSat standards. There is currently no standard commercial CubeSat board that has been developed with the necessary robustness needed for long duration missions in harsh mission environments. The growth in commercial CubeSat developments is growing considerably and this development with VORAGO will address a TAM of several hundred CubeSat systems per year. Based on a market estimate with Pumpkin (the leading commercial CubeSat subsystem company), VORAGO believe that we could sell approximately 100 of these boards each year to commercial CubeSat developers, starting in 2018. The board will be designed to be fully compatible with commercial CubeSat standards to enable it to communicate seamlessly with all commercially available CubeSat subsystems (such as those available from different suppliers on the Pumpkin store). VORAGO have tentatively agreed with Pumpkin that the board will be sold on the Pumpkin web store to make it easy for commercial CubeSat developers to locate and buy it. Specifically, this board design could be used as the Command and Data Handling subsystem in different sized CubeSats (from 1U upwards) for any CubeSat application including exploration, imaging, communications, sensing and measurement missions. More »
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Primary U.S. Work Locations and Key Partners
| Organizations Performing Work | Role | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| Silicon Space Technology Corporation | Lead Organization | Industry | Austin, Texas |
Goddard Space Flight Center
(GSFC)
|
Supporting Organization | NASA Center | Greenbelt, Maryland |
Primary U.S. Work Locations
-
Maryland
-
Texas
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