Why the Space Boom..

Why the Space Boom..

The modern-day revolution in satellites has pivoted to the NewSpace of mega constellations and game changing platforms. These platforms are enabling daily revisits over the entire planet of not only high resolution imagery in the visible spectrum by companies like Planet, but also night or day or in any weather via Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) platforms like those now available from Capella Space and ICEYE.

Renewed Enthusiasm, Focus, & Funding

Folding in investments not seen in the space community in many decades plus the creativity to forge new ground has been astounding. We’ve got tiers of companies from the massive traditional government prime contractors like, Lockheed Martin, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman with the new well funded entrants like SpaceX Starlink, Amazon Kuiper, and OneWeb. The next ultra creative tiers like Capella Space, NanoAvionics, and many others have been enabled to make a huge difference in the space community. The industry has been further empowered by the lowering of entry cost by affordable launches at a much higher cadence. Coupled with more capable, resilient and most importantly cost-effective electronics closer to commercial class, has enabled rapid development of satellites.

Intersection of AI and Space

As terrestrial proliferation of AI and Deep Learning into every aspect of our life begins to pivot for enabling that into the space ecosystem. The once before unachievable satellite autonomy continues the rapid evolution integrating that very approach into mega constellation management and collision avoidance to autonomous rovers and drones outside our planet.

Pace of Space

Taking a step back, the space community is evolving from platforms that took years to make electronics robust enough for the environment. Risk profiles are being carefully explored instead of the traditional belt and suspenders on everything. Today you are seeing platforms evolve as they march toward launch with upgrades occurring continuously along the way instead of designs being locked down years in advance. We are seeing a complete pivot from satellites built, integrated and tested in years to now commonly done in months to weeks and in some cases now even just days.

Space Processing Evolution

We are seeing avionics and processing platforms that have migrated from the 90’s vintage BAE Systems’ RAD6000's evolve into RAD750s and Honeywells’ RHPPC603e that were developed by the NASA JPL X2000 program. These processing platforms enabled the existing class of Mars Rovers, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) platforms and Deep Space Missions of the 00’s and 10’s. Migration continued in the 10’s and 20’s into not only the traditional Single Board Computer (SBC) platforms like the BAE RAD5545 and DDC SCS3740, but also liberating softcore processors like ARM and RISC-V into Xilinx and Microchip FPGA platforms. These flexible architectures enabled further personalization and repurposing of satellites not only during integration and testing, but also during operations in space.

Enabling The Computation

The evolution of these SBCs spurred the need to develop that of the Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) needed for booting the processors and loading the FPGA images. From the 90’s showcasing DDCs’ 1Mb EEPROMs to the 00’s and 10’s with the CAES and Honeywell 16Mb and 64Mb MRAMs. Pausing for a moment to compare those densities to the sheer amount of NVM we have in just our cellular phones today. That truly showcases how in order to harness the power of the 20's with leveraging more advanced CPUs, GPUs, TPU, IPUs, APUs, we require the trail further paved like to significantly higher densities enabled by likes of the Avalanche 1Gb and 4Gb STT-MRAMs. The STT-MRAM higher densities, robustness, and performance further enables the simplification of the platform designs. With that you don’t require numerous types of memory devices for each specific function, like EEPROMs, FLASH, and DRAMs. You also do not need the added complexity of monitoring and managing each device with different types of mitigation for the space environment Single Event Effects and Total Ionizing Dose impacts.

Pressing Onward

While the above two examples of SBCs and memory may seem trivial, they are in fact the foundations enabling the space revolution and democratization of the space ecosystem to fully enable what we take for granted here on the ground. We have countless data centers here on the ground for storing and analyzing all the data into actionable information that can be leveraged. As the space ecosystem evolves even from just within these two basic building blocks, it enables the next phase of the industry for the satellite data centers like Unibaps’ SpaceCloud as well as that of LEOcloud. Thereby enabling companies and platforms to focus on their strengths whether it’s Electrical Optical (EO) imagery from Maxar to SAR imagery from Capella Space to RF Geoanalytics from HawkEye360.

References

1. https://www.avalanche-technology.com/products/discrete-mram/aerospace/
2. https://www.capellaspace.com/capella-unveils-worlds-highest-resolution-commercial-sar-imagery/
3. https://www.gsitechnology.com/Aerospace-and-Defense
4. https://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/academics/483F03/483L23.data_mgmt/IAF071298.X2000_systems.pdf
5. https://www.baesystems.com/en-us/productfamily/space-systems
6. https://www.ddc-web.com/en/radhard/sbcsforspace/low-power-quad-core-3u-spacevpx-computer-for-space?partNumber=SCS3740
7. https://www.eetimes.com/honeywell-to-develop-rad-hard-powerpc/#
8. https://aerospace.honeywell.com/us/en/learn/products/space/spacecraft-on-board-computer
9. https://www.he360.com/products/mission-space-commercial-rf-analysis-platform/
10. https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-launches-four-new-radar-imaging-satellites-taking-a-further-leap-forward-in-persistent-monitoring-capabilities
11. https://www.maxar.com/products/satellite-imagery
12. https://www.ddc-web.com/ddc/public/en/connectivity/interfaces/memories-1/rad-hard-33v-1-megabit-128k-x-8-bit-eeprom-memory?partNumber=28LV010