Space Micro Inc.'s single-board computer launched in space aboard satellite

Dec. 29, 2006
SAN DIEGO, 29 Dec. 2006. Space Micro Inc.'s Proton100k space computer was launched successfully aboard the TacSat-2 satellite from Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops, Va. The Proton100k radiation-hardened single-board computer (RH SBC) is the instrument computer of the Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) RoadRunner On-board Processing Experiment (ROPE), performing data management and processing of focal plane array data.

SAN DIEGO, 29 Dec. 2006.Space Micro Inc.'s Proton100k space computer was launched successfully aboard the TacSat-2 satellite from Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops, Va.

The Proton100k radiation-hardened single-board computer (RH SBC) is the instrument computer of the Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) RoadRunner On-board Processing Experiment (ROPE), performing data management and processing of focal plane array data. ROPE is one of 11 on-board instrument packages that range from Enhanced Commercial Imager to Integrated GPS Occultation Receiver (IGOR). Space Micro also supplied the 64Gbit Solid State Recorder (SSR) which together made up the core of the on-board processing unit.

The Proton100k is the first-generation design of a line of radiation-hardened computers capable of 1,200 MIPS performance at a Single Event Upset (SEU) rate of 1E-4 unrecoverable errors/day using 7 to 9 watts of power.

The Proton100k also has a total dose tolerance of >100 krad (Si). Protection from Single Event Upsets (SEUs) is achieved using Space Micro's patent-pending Time-Triple Modular Redundancy (TTMR) approach, while Single Event Functional Interrupts (SEFIs) are mitigated using the patent-pending H-Core (Hardened Core) technology.

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