NASA Awards Next-Generation Spaceflight Computing Processor Contract
WASHINGTON (NASA HQ PR) — NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has selected Microchip Technology Inc. of Chandler, Arizona, to develop a High-Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) processor that will provide at least 100 times the computational capacity of current spaceflight computers. This key capability would advance all types of future space missions, from planetary exploration to lunar and Mars surface missions.
“This cutting-edge spaceflight processor will have a tremendous impact on our future space missions and even technologies here on Earth,” said Niki Werkheiser, director of technology maturation within the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This effort will amplify existing spacecraft capabilities and enable new ones and could ultimately be used by virtually every future space mission, all benefiting from more capable flight computing.”
Microchip will architect, design, and deliver the HPSC processor over three years, with the goal of employing the processor on future lunar and planetary exploration missions. Microchip’s processor architecture will significantly improve the overall computing efficiency for these missions by enabling computing power to be scalable, based on mission needs. The design also will be more reliable and have a higher fault tolerance. The processor will enable spacecraft computers to perform calculations up to 100 times faster than today’s state-of-the-art space computers. As part of NASA’s ongoing commercial partnership efforts, the work will take place under a $50 million firm-fixed-price contract, with Microchip contributing significant research and development costs to complete the project.
“We are pleased that NASA selected Microchip as its partner to develop the next-generation space-qualified compute processor platform.” said Babak Samimi, corporate vice president for Microchip’s Communications business unit. “We are making a joint investment with NASA on a new trusted and transformative compute platform. It will deliver comprehensive Ethernet networking, advanced artificial intelligence/machine learning processing and connectivity support while offering unprecedented performance gain, fault-tolerance, and security architecture at low power consumption. We will foster an industry wide ecosystem of single board computer partners anchored on the HPSC processor and Microchip’s complementary space-qualified total system solutions to benefit a new generation of mission-critical edge compute designs optimized for size, weight, and power.”
Current space-qualified computing technology is designed to address the most computationally-intensive part of a mission – a practice that leads to overdesigning and inefficient use of computing power. For example, a Mars surface mission demands high-speed data movement and intense calculation during the planetary landing sequence. However, routine mobility and science operations require fewer calculations and tasks per second. Microchip’s new processor architecture offers the flexibility for the processing power to ebb and flow depending on current operational requirements. Certain processing functions can also be turned off when not in use, reducing power consumption. This capability will save a large amount of energy and improve overall computing efficiency for space missions.
“Our current spaceflight computers were developed almost 30 years ago,” said Wesley Powell, NASA’s principal technologist for advanced avionics. “While they have served past missions well, future NASA missions demand significantly increased onboard computing capabilities and reliability. The new computing processor will provide the advances required in performance, fault tolerance, and flexibility to meet these future mission needs.”
Microchip’s HPSC processor may be useful to other government agencies and applicable to other types of future space mission to explore our solar system and beyond, from Earth science operations to Mars exploration and human lunar missions. The processor could potentially be used for commercial systems on Earth that require similar mission critical edge computing needs as space missions and are able to safely continue operations if one component of the system fails. These potential applications include industrial automation, edge computing, time-sensitive ethernet data transmission, artificial intelligence, and even Internet of Things gateways, which bridge various communication technologies.
In 2021, NASA solicited proposals for a trade study for an advanced radiation-hardened computing chip with the intention of selecting one vendor for development. This contract is part of NASA’s High-Performance Space Computing project. HPSC is led by the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development program with support from the Science Mission Directorate. The project is led by JPL, a division of Caltech.
11 responses to “NASA Awards Next-Generation Spaceflight Computing Processor Contract”
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Excellent.
These artist renderings of astronauts on the surface are misleading though.
Very little bunny hopping is going to happen. Maybe a few for P.R. but the astronaut corps will be trying everything they can to limit dosing.
It would be far better to robotically roof over a small crater, dozer regolith on top for radiation shielding, and use an inflatable shelter as a place to immediately go after landing. I don’t see any kind of human mission without a radiation sanctuary. Even a relatively short Apollo length stay is not a good idea due to solar storms.
I suspect that The Shiny will end up with a state-of-the-art radiation shelter aboard.
Space radiation shielding is not something like a computer or rocket engine that can be improved upon. The blabbering spacex fans do about this or that “new thing” is about very small increases in ability to block radiation from solar events or “solar storms” and these are often called “storm shelters.” What most people do not understand is that crews stay out of those shelters unless they are bombarded by solar radiation. Why? Because the 24/7 radiation constantly penetrating spacecraft and astronauts is COSMIC RADIATION and is very different. When the heavy nuclei component of galactic cosmic radiation hits these storm shelters they actually produce “secondaries” and generate more radiation. Only when a solar storm hits do they save the astronauts from profound dosing but normally they have the highest level of radiation in the spacecraft. See how that works?
Unless you stop almost all the cosmic radiation you get no benefit and end up with more or less the same dosing as no shielding at all, except when Solar Energetic Particle levels go up. What does it take to stop cosmic rays and the secondary radiation effects? From “Shielding Space Travelers” by Eugene Parker (the guy they named the solar probe after):
“To match the protection offered by Earth’s atmosphere takes the – equivalent to the air mass above an altitude of 5,500 meters. Any less would begin to be counterproductive, because the shielding material would fail to absorb the shrapnel. If the material is water, it has to be five meters deep. So a spherical water tank encasing a small capsule would have a mass of about 500 tons.”
THAT…is “state of the art.” For any practical living space for long duration missions at least, at the very least, double that figure to a thousand tons.
Aren’t there ways to eliminate “secondaries”? I vaguely remember reading something somewhere…
Yeah. Here’s something that might qualify as state-of-the-art.
Hydrogenated boron nitride nanotubes—known as hydrogenated BNNTs—are tiny, nanotubes made of carbon, boron, and nitrogen, with hydrogen interspersed throughout the empty spaces left in between the tubes. Boron is also an excellent absorber secondary neutrons, making hydrogenated BNNTs an ideal shielding material.
No mass means no secondaries but a thin skin space craft is not a great idea. More mass to soak it ALL up is best plan. Near Sea Level Radiation is the ideal. Along with a tether system this level of shielding would provide what I call a Near Sea Level Radiation 1 Gravity (NSLR1G) environment. I strongly suggest the article by Parker. It is available online by googling “Shielding Space Travelers” UCLA.
People may cite Parkers article regarding “magnetic shields” but he is actually describing at length why it is impractical. He calls a water or plastic shield “impractical” only in regards to the space shuttle payload, which is also misquoted by NewSpace fanboys. All they know how to do is trivialize radiation and will lie and mislead as a standard practice to defend that dogma.
A water shield is heavier than a plastic shield but far more desirable because it can of course be used in a life support system and for other things like dampening out oscillations in a tether-generated artificial gravity system. Both systems are massive and would require Nuclear Propulsion and NOT nuclear thermal, which is just not good enough. Only Nuclear Pulse (bombs) now, or possibly some new form of Nuclear Electric may soon be available.
BNNT material would not be that much of an improvement on simple plastic. As the actual structure of the spacecraft it might reduce secondary somewhat but likely at great expense. Might save some mass in a storm shelter but….no effect at all on heavy nuclei from Cosmic Rays. Really. You would still not go in there unless it was during a solar storm because the radiation from secondaries would normally make it the highest dose area in the spacecraft. It may work on SEP but is not really going to help with secondaries much and claiming so is misleading.
Radiation limiting missions to a few hours or couple of days may be a bigger concern to Internet commenters than it is to NASA. The difference, I expect being that one is better informed on the matter than the other. Time will tell which is right.
The early Artemis landing missions are being planned with one to two weeks on the surface, and the later Artemis Base Camp missions adding a pressurized rover and surface hab for surface stays up to a month and a half.
On the surface, the core elements for a sustained presence would include an emphasis on mobility to allow astronauts to explore more of the Moon and conduct more science:
https://www.nasa.gov/featur…
Another factor is the perceived importance of the mission. If it is seen as irrelevant to our daily lives on Earth, then any level of risk is seen as a showstopper. If it is seen as nationally important, somewhat more risk can be tolerated. If it is seen as critical to national survival, then enormous levels of risk are acceptable as in combat missions.
There will be a different take on it for non-government exploration. In these, the levels of risk will be based on individual tolerance of the financier and participants. That may have very little to do with the NASA levels of risk tolerance. Deep mining, commercial fishing, construction and other occupations often have levels of risk well above perceived normal. Not to mention extreme sports where fatalities are expected.
The base restriction is the risk/reward ratio. For some, no risk is acceptable. For others extreme risk or even certain debilitation and death are acceptable. For politicians, sending people into risky situations is a balance of public perceptions. For companies and individuals, perceptions of others is somewhat less important. For both importance of the mission controls the risk acceptance.
In the extreme, I suspect many would accept a suicide mission to divert an asteroid that threatened to wipe out humanity.
Yes, just look at the long line to climb Mount Everest with its high risk factor (200 plus bodies frozen along the trail by some estimates…) for nothing more than bragging rights, or those who risk unnecessary deep dives to famous shipwrecks just to brag about it.
The Rand Simberg school of space exploration; “it’s OK if people die, really.”
I am surprised you did not attach pictures of dead mountain climbers like he does. That’s NewSpace.
The spacex fanboys have to trivialize radiation, as they are doing in their comments here. It is dogma to them and in their NewSpace bubble they know nothing else. What they are missing when they claim NASA is OK with radiation is that if you listen carefully to the way NASA words it, NASA officials are “managing” short stays on the Moon and Gateway (by saying Gateway will not be permanently manned, which translates to short stays). When they talk about radiation and Mars they always mention “fast trips” of around 3 months. They are waffling.