Avionics Enhancements for Microsatellite Platforms

An enabling component for spacecraft design and planning to take advantage of ESPA capability is to design spacecraft around a common avionics architecture. MSI has developed the Intelligent Power & Data Ring (IPDR) architecture which is a modular approach to increase or decrease avionics capability as a mission needs dictate. While not an optimized solution for mass or power consumption, the flexibility it allows in design and cost savings are brought to a spacecraft designer’s arsenal. As nodes are put together into a ring, their capability, in terms of I/O, increases accordingly. A spacecraft system can then be designed around the known capabilities and if additional components or telemetry required addition of a node that can be easily incorporated into the overall system without need to requalify or redesign the avionics architecture. The IPDR technology is baselined for some upcoming spacecraft to prove its utility. MSI proposes the Avionics Enhancements for Microsatellite Platforms (AEMP) to improve upon the use of the current generation of IPDR and look to improve its performance and utility for future missions.