NASA and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M., are requesting research and development proposals to define the type of spacecraft computing needed for future missions.

Through a broad agency announcement, the Air Force Next Generation Space Processor Analysis Program is seeking two to four companies to perform a yearlong evaluation of advanced, space-based applications that would use spaceflight processors for the 2020-2030 time frame.

NASA's decision to partner with the Air Force and issue a joint solicitation was influenced by a four-month formulation study funded by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate's Game Changing Development Program.

During that investigation, engineers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., evaluated 19 real-life mission scenarios involving the use of flight processors.

"We surveyed NASA's needs and it became more than obvious that we could take advantage of an advanced processor," said Richard Doyle, the program manager for JPL's Information and Data Science Program and study leader.

By any standard, NASA's state-of-the-art is significantly less capable than what is available in most consumer products, said Wes Powell, a NASA Goddard engineer who participated in the study.

"We have special requirements," Doyle said. "Our flight needs are more extreme and our processors must be able to perform robustly in a radiation environment, using low power." As a result, both military and civilian mission planners must use specialized, vastly more expensive processors that have been hardened against radiation-induced upsets and generally have a higher degree of fault tolerance.

Limitations of the Current State-of-the-Art The current state-of-the-art - the RAD750 - is a single-board computer manufactured by BAE Systems Electronic Solutions. Specifically designed to operate in high-radiation environments like those encountered in space, BAE released the technology in 2001 as the successor to the RAD6000.

As of 2010, the RAD750 had become de rigueur for a broad range of space missions, including the Curiosity rover, the Solar Dynamics Observatory and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, among others.

Though it's hardened against radiation-induced upsets and uses only five watts of power - another important performance requirement in energy-constrained spaceflight missions - the RAD750 computes only 200 million operations per second.

Original post:

NASA Seeks High-Performance Spaceflight Computing Capabilities