MSU Computer Technology Once Again Visits Space Station

Marshall Swearingen, MSU News Service

BOZEMAN — A technology developed at Montana State University to improve how spacecraft computers cope with disruptive cosmic radiation has once again traveled to the International Space Station for testing.

The prototype arrived at the space station on Nov. 4, two days after MSU students who helped design and build the device watched it leave on a rocket launched from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

"It really felt like a milestone," said electrical engineering doctoral student Chris Major, who attended the launch with Colter Barney, a junior majoring in computer engineering who also worked on the project. "It felt good to see so many years of work go into space," Major said.

The computer is contained in a bread loaf-sized satellite called RadSat-u that the space station is expected to eject into orbit in January. As it circles Earth, the computer will perform calculations that test its radiation-resisting capabilities while the satellite sends periodic reports to MSU students monitoring it from MSU's Space Science and Engineering Laboratory.

"This is the most mature version yet of this computer technology, and it's starting to take its final form," said Brock LaMeres, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in MSU's Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering, who also attended the launch. "That's what's exciting."

LaMeres conceived the technology a decade ago as a way to make computing in outer space more affordable and reliable. Traditionally, spacecraft computers have used oversized circuitry made of special materials to fortify against the radiation that bombards outer space. (Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field block that radiation from reaching the planet’s surface.) LaMeres' approach instead uses multiple inexpensive processors like those found in personal computers. The processors are programmed to operate in parallel, so that when a radiation particle disrupts one, the others recognize the fault, continue the computation and re-program any damaged computer memory.

The technology has been tested in the lab, on high-altitude balloons and on rockets that reach the edge of outer space. Following a successful test aboard the space station in 2017, a small satellite housing the computer was launched from the space station in 2018. Each test has produced insights that helped refine the design, LaMeres said.

The upcoming trial is likely the final test before the technology heads to the moon as one of a dozen payloads chosen to be part of NASA’s 2020-2021 Commercial Lunar Payload Services project. Success on the moon would mark the final stages before the technology could potentially be commercialized, LaMeres said.

According to LaMeres, the project has received more than $4 million in funding from NASA during the past decade, and roughly 150 students, including 130 undergraduates, have contributed to the research. RadSat-u is the 10th satellite built at the Space Science and Engineering Laboratory and sent to outer space.