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
The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC empl ...
.
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
Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually con ...
.
Missions
*
Hubble Servicing Mission 4: The SpaceCube was the brains of the Relative Navigation Sensors autonomous docking experiment that was intended to run in parallel with the
astronaut
An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...
controlled docking of the
Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most ver ...
.
RNS met its stated goals.
*
MISSE-7: The SpaceCube was attached to the outside of the
ISS
The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAX ...
during an
EVA on
Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program na ...
Mission
STS-129
STS-129 (ISS assembly flight ULF3) was a NASA Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS). ''Atlantis'' was launched on November 16, 2009 at 14:28 EST, and landed at 09:44 EST on November 27, 2009 on runway 33 at the Kennedy ...
(Nov 2009). It provides an on-orbit test platform for demonstrating innovative radiation hardened by software techniques. It is mounted on the
NRL
The National Rugby League (NRL) is an Australasian rugby league club competition which contains clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand. The NRL formed in 1998 as a joint partnership ...
's MISSE7 experiment which is attach to an
ExPRESS Logistics Carrier
An EXpedite the PRocessing of Experiments to Space Station (ExPRESS) Logistics Carrier (ELC) is an unpressurized attached payload platform for the International Space Station (ISS) that provides mechanical mounting surfaces, electrical power, and ...
.
/ref>
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
A sounding rocket or rocketsonde, sometimes called a research rocket or a suborbital rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The rockets are used to ...
flight in the fall of 2010.Xilinx
Xilinx, Inc. ( ) was an American technology and semiconductor company that primarily supplied programmable logic devices. The company was known for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and creating the fi ...
's new radiation-hardened Virtex-5 FPGA.
Awards
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC emp ...
SpaceCube team earned an honorable mention for the 2009 "IRAD Innovator of the Year" award.
On-board science data processing achievements
* Synthetic Aperture Radar
Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) is a form of radar that is used to create two-dimensional images or three-dimensional reconstructions of objects, such as landscapes. SAR uses the motion of the radar antenna over a target region to provide fine ...
(SAR) results:
** 6 to 1 loss-less data volume reduction on SAR Nadir Altimetry dataset.
References
External links
PowerPC405 MIPS StudySpaceCube on FacebookA pose and position measurement system for the Hubble Space Telescope servicing missionSummer 2008 Goddard Tech TrendsMAPLD 2009 RNS SpaceCubeMAPLD 2009 SpaceCube ActivitiesRHBD Xilinx Virtex-5Heavy ion SEE test of Xilinx Virtex4 XC4VFX60 FPGASpaceCube Virtex-4 FPGA qualification methodologySpring 2009 Goddard News Tech TransferXilinx XCell Journal Customer Innovation Issue
;Media
SpaceCube Photo Gallery on FlickrSpaceCube in Atlantis Shuttle bay
The SpaceCube is mounted on the MISSE-7 ExPA on ELC-2 on the bottom right.)
SpaceCube mounted to MISSE7's ExPA
The SpaceCube is the smaller box with several connectors on top)
Naval Research Lab's MISSE-7 Press Release
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spacecube
Hubble Space Telescope
Goddard Space Flight Center
Satellite buses