Statistics – Computation
Scientific paper
Dec 2001
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agufmsm22a0840r&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2001, abstract #SM22A-0840
Statistics
Computation
2794 Instruments And Techniques, 6994 Instruments And Techniques, 7819 Experimental And Mathematical Techniques, 7894 Instruments And Techniques, 9805 Instruments Useful In Three Or More Fields
Scientific paper
As Space Science moves steadily towards missions involving greater numbers of spacecraft and increasingly more capable instrumentation, greater and greater demands are placed on mission communications and operations. However the resource envelopes for these multi spacecraft missions are not likely to be substantially greater than the resource envelopes required to produce and operate single spacecraft missions today. Therefore, the task is to learn how to develop and operate multi spacecraft missions for the cost of single spacecraft missions today. Automation and autonomy will play central roles in achieving the required operational efficiencies. As with most ground-based endeavors, the field of system automation has taken advantage of the rapid advance of computing power in recent years. Some of these techniques are making their way into space missions, but their implementation on board spacecraft is hampered by the retarded progress of space-worthy electronics. Improvements in spacecraft reliability and autonomy have been obtained over the decades, but it is still difficult to make up for the fact that radiation hardened electronics is typically two generations behind Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) equipment. NASA/HPCC's Remote Exploration and Experimentation Project (REE) researched ways to bring state-of-the-art COTS computing technology to spacecraft implementation. Focusing on mission applications that require intensive, general purpose computing, REE developed radiation effects models for important COTS components, examined methods of hardware and software implemented fault tolerance, developed a fault-injector testbed, and developed application software to move some science data processing onto spacecraft. We discuss the results of this work and its implications for onboard computation and its resource requirements. To validate the REE approach and to obtain flight heritage, a Science Co-Processor experiment, named the Magnetospheric Plasma Analysis Computation Testbed (MPACT), is being developed for a test flight as a Hitchhiker payload for the Space Shuttle. A fairly traditional Control Unit based on a radiation hardened processor, e.g. a RAD6000, will control the experiment and monitor the performance of the non-hardened system components. Two COTS-based Compute Nodes using G4 processors will perform automated data processing and reduction functions on data received from the Control Unit. Actual archived Level-0 plasma particle detector data will be used in this experiment. Previous work with such data shows that the construction of high order phase space (fluid) moments for downlink can lead to scientifically lossless effective compression ratios of hundreds or thousands, opening the way for the more intelligent selection of high resolution plasma data. In this way, new opportunities to obtain high resolution data are created. The challenges associated with the production of reliable, high quality plasma moments in real time onboard a spacecraft will be discussed. Future work on applications to plasma wave data will be outlined.
Atwater T. W.
Bhat M. K.
Boardsen Scott A.
Curtis Steven Andrew
Johnson Alexis M.
No associations
LandOfFree
MPACT: Architecture and Design of a COTS Science Co-Processor for Space Science Missions does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with MPACT: Architecture and Design of a COTS Science Co-Processor for Space Science Missions, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and MPACT: Architecture and Design of a COTS Science Co-Processor for Space Science Missions will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1383822