The Configurable Fault Tolerant Processor (CFTP), developed by the

Space Systems Academic Group Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider ...

at the

Naval Postgraduate School The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is a public graduate school operated by the United States Navy and located in Monterey, California. It offers master’s and doctoral degrees in more than 70 fields of study to the U.S. Armed Forces, DOD ci ...

, is an experimental payload on board the

United States Naval Academy The United States Naval Academy (US Naval Academy, USNA, or Navy) is a federal service academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It was established on 10 October 1845 during the tenure of George Bancroft as Secretary of the Navy. The Naval Academy ...

's (USNA)

MidSTAR-1 MidSTAR-1 is an artificial satellite produced by the United States Naval Academy Small Satellite Program. It was sponsored by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) Space Test Program (STP), and was launched on March 9, 2007 at 03:10 UTC, ...

satellite. Midstar-1 was launched into a 492km

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...

(LEO) on March 8, 2007, aboard an

Atlas V Atlas V is an expendable launch system and the fifth major version in the Atlas (rocket family), Atlas launch vehicle family. It was originally designed by Lockheed Martin, now being operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture be ...

expendable launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, along with

FalconSat 3 FalconSAT is the United States Air Force Academy's (USAFA) small satellite engineering program. Satellites are designed, built, tested, and operated by Academy cadets. The project is administered by the USAFA Space Systems Research Center under ...

STPSat 1 The Space Test Program (STP) is the primary provider of spaceflight for the United States Department of Defense (DoD) space science and technology community. STP is managed by a group within the Advanced Systems and Development Directorate, a ...

, and

CFESat CFESat (Cibola Flight Experiment Satellite) was a satellite that examined radio spectra for ionospheric and lightning studies, using field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). As well as science observation, the mission aimed to demonstrate the use of ...

as secondary payloads. The primary payload was

Orbital Express Orbital Express: ASTRO and NEXTSat Orbital Express was a space mission managed by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and a team led by engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The Orbital Express p ...

CFTP Purpose

The Configurable Fault Tolerant Processor Project aims to demonstrate the feasibility of using

Field Programmable Gate Array A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware de ...

s (FPGAs) for spacecraft computer processing by applying various fault tolerance techniques to the designs. CFTP provides a valuable testbed for on-orbit evaluation of various fault tolerant concepts. The use of FPGAs provides added flexibility, allowing on-orbit upgrades and rapid development cycles. Using Commercial off the shelf (COTS) technology allows the engineer to produce more technologically advanced designs at a lower cost and in a shorter time than using more traditional space-grade components. Space-based FPGA design also provides the Naval Postgraduate School students with unique challenges in developing for and configuring the system. Remotely accessing the platform over a limited downlink and uplink provides challenges not seen on ground-based systems.

CFTP Versions

CFTP-1

The CFTP-1 board utilizes

Xilinx Xilinx, Inc. ( ) was an American technology and semiconductor company that primarily supplied programmable logic devices. The company was known for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and creating the fi ...

Virtex I parts for both the control and experiment FPGAs. The complete CFTP payload, as delivered to MidSTAR-1, consists of the CFTP board itself (shown in the spacecraft image above), an ARM processor board that communicates with the control FPGA on the CFTP board through a PC/104 bus, and a power supply board. The ARM processor board communicates with the spacecraft's Command and Data Handler (C&DH) computer through a serial PPP link. CFTP-1 underwent radiation testing at the UC Davis' cyclotron facility prior to integration with the MidSTAR satellite.

CFTP-2

The CFTP-2 system is currently an entirely ground based system. The CFTP-2 board itself is set up nearly identically to the CFTP-1 board, however it utilizes a

Virtex 2 part as the experiment FPGA, rather than the Xilinx Virtex I part on CFTP-1. This system was tested in a proton beam using the

University of California at Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

' cyclotron.

References

{{reflist Satellite Internet access