The Hubble Space Telescope being lifted out of the payload bay of Atlantis before being released back into space.
SpaceCube aboard MISSE-7

SpaceCube is a family of high-performance reconfigurable systems designed for spaceflight applications requiring on-board processing. The SpaceCube was developed by engineers at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.[1] The SpaceCube 1.0 system is based on Xilinx's Virtex-4 commercial FPGAs. The debut mission of the SpaceCube 1.0, Hubble Servicing Mission 4, was the first time Xilinx's Virtex-4 FPGAs flew in space.[2]

Missions

Family overview

  • SpaceCube 1.0: Based on Xilinx's Virtex-4 commercial FPGAs.
  • SpaceCube 1.5: Intermediate version of SpaceCube 2.0. Based on Xilinx's Virtex-5 commercial FPGAs. Scheduled to fly on sounding rocket flight in the fall of 2010.[7]
  • SpaceCube 2.0: Currently under development with over $1 million in funding.[7] The SpaceCube 2.0 system is based around Xilinx's new radiation-hardened Virtex-5 FPGA.[7][8]

Awards

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center SpaceCube team earned an honorable mention for the 2009 "IRAD Innovator of the Year" award.[9]

On-board science data processing achievements

  • Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) results:
    • 6 to 1 loss-less data volume reduction on SAR Nadir Altimetry dataset.[10]
    • 165x data volume reduction on SAR mapping dataset.[10]

References

  1. Office of the Chief Technologist (2006). "NASA Goddard Space Flight Center FY 2006 Internal Research and Development Program" (PDF). NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-03-20.
  2. "Xilinx December 2008 Newsletter". Xilinx. 2008. Archived from the original on 2010-02-03. Retrieved 2009-09-25.
  3. Office of the Chief Technologist (2008). "SpaceCube to Debut in Flight Demonstration: Hybrid Computer to Fly on Hubble Servicing Mission". NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Archived from the original on 2008-10-07.
  4. Flight Results of the HST SM4 Relative Navigation Sensor System
  5. ISS Program Scientist's Office (2009). "Materials International Space Station Experiment - 7 (MISSE-7)". NASA. Archived from the original on 2008-12-10.
  6. Astronauts Install SpaceCube on International Space Station
  7. 1 2 3 Office of the Chief Technologist (2009). "Goddard Tech Trends Spring 2009" (PDF). Goddard Space Flight Center. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-07-23.
  8. "Rad-Hard Virtex-5". Defense Update. Archived from the original on 2009-11-21. Retrieved 2009-09-25.
  9. "Goddard 2009 IRAD Innovator of the Year award". Goddard Space Flight Center. 2009. Archived from the original on 2009-11-19.
  10. 1 2 "SpaceCube On-Board SAR Data Processing Results". Goddard Space Flight Center. 2010.
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