Modular, Fault-Tolerant Electronics Supporting Space Exploration

AeroAstro's innovative design approach for implementing reconfigurable electronics frees the spacecraft designer to concentrate on the mission at hand with significant assurance that single-point failures can be automatically corrected. It also uses dynamic reconfiguration to change circuit functions which will create the opportunity to conserve mass, volume, and power while providing capabilities that may have been valuable, but deemed to be less important or infrequently needed so that they could not justify dedicated hardware. The system operates at a much finer level of granularity than with other reconfigurable approaches, which increases not the only adaptability and versatility, but also reduces the redundancy required to assure the success of the mission. Unlike traditional approaches that employ redundant systems, there are no mass penalties, and affordability is achievable. Significant benefits include dramatic orders of magnitude reduction in mass, volume, and cost.