Stacking up for space

A multi-functional computer system will help the US space agency aim for the heavens.

UQ electronics engineers have teamed up with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to help build a new computer system for future space missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

The UQ team, led by Dr John Williams, is building the software operating system for the American space agency’s Reconfigurable Scaleable Computing (RSC) project.

RSC is a modular computer system with small motherboards, measuring about 13cm x 10cm, that can be stacked and linked together in different sized clusters, depending on their use.  Dr Williams said RSC would be used for data-rich processing in space such as controlling exploration rovers, robotic mining vehicles, real-time cameras and sensors, and for surface and atmospheric analysis.

"Conventional silicon chips can only perform the task they were designed to do, but RSC uses reconfigurable logic chips that can be infinitely reprogrammed to perform almost any function,” Dr Williams said.  “This is particularly useful for missions requiring fast processing as well as the flexibility to update their function or correct design errors after a spacecraft has been launched."

RSC principal investigator Dr Robert Hodson said NASA wanted an alternative space computing system to improve processing speed and reduce the expense and time to retest systems for different missions; but RSC would not replace all space computing, such as shuttle take-off or flight control systems.

The RSC operating system is a modified version of Linux, an open-source alternative to Microsoft Windows or Apple MacOS.

UQ’s School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering has signed a partnership agreement with NASA’s Langley Research Centre for its four-year RSC project, worth approximately $18 million.  UQ is the only non-US partner in RSC, and the agreement follows NASA’s continued relationship with UQ’s Centre for Hypersonics, whose research program will move into a new phase in March 2006.

The Centre’s HyShot™ team is preparing for new scramjet flights from Woomera in South Australia.

Scramjets are very fast, air-breathing jet engines. UQ researchers were the first in the world to show these engines worked in a ground test facility in 1993, and in actual flight in 2002.

The planned flights are:
• HyShot III, a $2 million collaborative scientific project to provide basic information on scramjet cavities and combustor pressures in a three-dimensional configuration at Mach 8;
• HyShot IV, also valued at $1.4 million, to test fuel injector configurations at Mach 8; and
• HyCAUSE, a $4.5 million project to test an engine designed to fly at Mach 10.  It is a partnership between the US defense agency and the Australian Hypersonics Initiative, whose members include the Australian Defence, Science and Technology Organisation, UQ, the Australian Defence Force Agency, the Australian National University, and the Queensland and South Australian governments.

FUNDING
NASA Langley Research Centre

RESEARCHERS
Dr John Williams (email: jwilliams@itee.uq.edu.au )
Professor Neil Bergmann  www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/researcher/bergmannnw.html

Websites:
www.itee.uq.edu.au
www.uq.edu.au/hypersonics

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