Introduction

Breakout of RadSat with Solar-Cell Experiment

Breakout of RadSat with Solar-Cell Experiment

This project has two primary goals. The first goal is to develop a cube satellite, RadSat, for demonstrating a Radiation Tolerant Computer Stack (RTCS) which was developed by graduate students here at MSU. The second goal is to design and integrate a solar cell experiment with the RTCS on RadSat. The solar cell experiment is an ionizing radiation detection sensor that will provide an additional layer of fault mitigation for the RTCS when high intensity radiation strikes are incident upon the RTCS. The solar cell experiment will also provide the ground team at MSU useful feedback regarding the frequency of ionizing radiation strikes experienced by the CubeSat.

Motivation

The project is part of the NASA TA11: Technology & Processing Roadmap, which lists support for reliable on-board processing in extreme environments to enable new exploration missions as a Level 3 Sub-Goal. NASA is seeking to develop a radiation-hardened general purpose flight processor that either exceeds the performance or consumes less power than existing systems flight computing systems. Current systems are only capable of providing about 200 million operations per second (MOPS) and consume nearly 20-30 Watts (W). Our capstone was funded because of the potential the radiation tolerant computer stack (complete with a radiation detection sensor) shows as a low power alternative to conventional flight computing systems.

Sponsor and Advisor Information

Sponsor: NASA

Undergraduate Student Instrument Project

Prof. Brock J. LaMeres | College of Engineering

Dr. LaMeres joined the Montana State ECE faculty in July of 2006. His primary areas of research are in Computer Engineering, Digital Systems, and Engineering Education.

Office: Cobleigh Hall 533
Tel: (406) 994-5987
Email: lameres@montana.edu

Prof. Todd J. Kaiser | College of Engineering

Dr. Kaiser joined the Montana State ECE faculty in the fall of 2000. His primary areas of research are in Microfabrication Technologies, Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS), Micro-sensors, and Micro-actuators.

Office: Cobleigh Hall 531
Tel: (406) 994-7276
Email: tjkaiser@montana.edu