Space Qualified, Radiation Hardened Command, Power & Data Handling System

ABSTRACT: Future military satellites, such as the Missile Defense Agency's Calibrated Orbiting Objects Project (COOP) satellite or the Air Force (ORS) Tacsat-5, will require a modular command, power and data handling avionics system that can be quickly and cost effectively modified to meet mission needs. Many of these satellites have common systems and interfaces, but differ in the number of instruments applied to the satellite mission. This commonality provides the opportunity to develop an avionics system that can provide central power distribution and payload management functions, with the following attributes: Provides power distribution and power management to instruments Provides command and data handling functions Small size for nano (~10 kg), micro (1,200 MIPS or 900 MFLOPS rad hard computing throughput o Floating point processor o Industry standard operating system with real-time scheduler o Large memory areas (512 MB flash and 256 MB SDRAM) Large number of industry standard digital interfaces Large number of standard analog interfaces Full power management functions for battery charging from solar array(s) Power switching of external instruments, computer controlled"