Ball Aerospace Develops 'Fault-Tolerant' Architecture For
Human-Rated Spacecraft
Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has completed
development of prototype launch vehicle flight computers equipped
to bring safety and reliability to future human spaceflight
systems. These flight computers were financed by Ball Aerospace and
are based on deployed units now being used by NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center in their simulation laboratories to develop software
and test systems for future human-rated launch vehicles. The
computers are a critical part of the electronic command and control
flight avionics system and are distinguished in their superior
performance and NASA's highest level human safety
specification.
"These advanced avionics are directly applicable to future human
exploration goals and objectives," said Cary Ludtke, vice president
and general manager of Ball's Civil and Operational Space business
unit. "We look forward to participating in future opportunities
that leverage Ball's technologies."
Fault-tolerant computing is a key ingredient to human-rated
launch vehicle architectures. Ball Aerospace's flight computers are
human-rated by design, and provide a low-risk path to flight for
NASA's Space Launch System or commercial crew launch systems. The
flight computers contain significant advances in throughput
performance, I/O interfaces, and fault detection. The design
supports on-the-fly recovery of a failed flight computer based on
hardware or flexible software voting.
Hardware and software technologies developed by Ball Aerospace
for future human spaceflight include: the vision navigation sensor
and the high definition docking camera used to support the
successful Sensor Test for Orion Relative Navigation Risk
Mitigation (STORRM) Development for the STS-134 mission; phased
array antennas; avionic assemblies; and cryogenic storage.
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