This section contains the most recent news of the onboard computers and data handling section.
ESA’s miniature satellite mission GomX-4B, includes a piggyback experiment to test how well everyday commercial computer memories perform in the radiation-soaked environment of space.
Launched on February 2018 from China, GomX-4B was built from six standard 10 cm CubeSat units by GomSpace in Denmark. Its main goal was to test radio links between satellites and micropropulsion, but GomX-4B also carryies a small, cheap but important secondary experiment: a single 10x10cm electronics board with 12 computer flash memories, made up of three examples of four different types, each purchased for a few euros.
Known as Chimera, this experiment tested how such ‘commercial-off-the-shelf’ parts cope with bombardments of high-energy electrically charged atomic particles from the Sun and deep space. A specially space-qualified monitoring chip recorded the performance of the dozen memories.
Read the full article here.
An ESA-led team subjected Intel’s new Myriad 2 artificial intelligence chip to one of the most energetic radiation beams available on Earth. This test of its suitability to fly in space took place at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The AI chip is related in turn to an ESA-fostered family of integrated circuits.
The Myriad 2 harnesses artificial intelligence for high-performance, low-power vision processing. It can be pre-trained with data to recognise particular features and patterns or perform in-depth 3D sensing, whatever its customer requires. The chip is run using a pair of twin LEON4 controllers – the latest in the LEON family of integrated circuits developed by ESA with Sweden’s Cobham Gaisler company.
ESA engineers are interested in harnessing the Myriad 2 to perform in-orbit image processing on future space missions, reducing the amount of data that needs to be sent back to Earth.
Read the full article here.
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