SpaceCube 3.0 Mini Processor Card

The SpaceCube 3.0 Mini Processor Card represents orders of magnitude increase in performance and capability over typical radiation-hardened processor-based systems and significant advances over the previous generation of SpaceCube technology. The primary processing engine of the card is a radiation-tolerant FPGA. This processor card is very low weight, can fit within the 1U CubeSat form-factor (10cm x 10cm x 10cm), and will be low power. Much of the SpaceCube 2.0 Micro design is incorporated into the SpaceCube 3.0 Mini design. In addition, lessons learned from the SpaceCube 2.0 Mini card are applied. Instead of using a rigid-flex design, the SC3.0 Mini uses a backplane architecture. The processor card plugs into a backplane that routes signals to other card slots. In order to meet the numerous high-speed I/O interfaces required by the latest generation science instruments and applications, a high-density backplane connector is needed. The SpaceCube 3.0 Mini uses a high-density connector to plug into the backplane. The FPGA has flash memory attached that is used for storing algorithm and application code for any hosted soft processors. The processor card also has a nanominiature front-panel connector that adds even more I/O to support instrument interfaces such as Camera Link or SpaceWire. The SpaceCube 3.0 Mini Processor Card features a rad-tolerant FPGA, but the radiation mitigation can be tailored for harsher environments by adding an external rad-hard device that configures and monitors the FPGA over the backplane. The processor card pushes transceiver quantity, routing, and performance for spaceflight. The card is designed to fit in the compact 1U CubeSat form factor. The SpaceCube 3.0 Mini supports scalability by networking multiple processor cards together. SpaceCube 3.0 is a family of high-performance reconfigurable systems designed for spaceflight applications requiring on-board processing. Many proposed missions require next-generation, on-board processing capabilities to meet specified mission goals. Advanced laser altimeter, radar, lidar, and hyperspectral instruments are proposed for many upcoming missions, and all of these instrument systems will require advanced onboard processing capabilities to facilitate the timely conversion of science data into science information and data products. Both an order of magnitude increase in processing power and the ability to reconfigure on-the-fly are required to implement algorithms that detect and react to events, produce data products on-board for applications, enable sensor web multi-platform collaboration, and perform on-board lossless data reduction. The SpaceCube 3.0 Mini Processor Card is designed for the processing needs of emerging science missions.