Single board computer deployed on JAXA’s GOSAT-2 mission

1st April 2019

Alex Lynn

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Another successful flight of its SCS750 Single Board Computer (SBC) on the Second Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT-2) has been announced by Data Device Corporation (DDC). Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and JAXA successfully launched H-IIA Launch Vehicle No. 40 (H-IIA F40,) which encapsulates the GOSAT-2 satellite, on October 29th, 2018 from the JAXA Tanegashima Space Center.

The launch and flight of H-IIA F40 proceeded as planned. As of late October, the satellite had completed the Critical Operations phase, and moved into its Operational Phase and has been operating successfully since then.

DDC provided a subcontractor to JAXA, Harris Corporation of Fort Wayne IN, with two flight SBCs for one of the key environmental sensor instruments on the satellite. Harris-built the TANSO-FTS-2 (Thermal and Near Infrared Sensor for Carbon Observation-Fourier Transform Spectrometer-2) that will measure greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The instrument will collect high-spectral resolution data of the Earth in five bands, which enables measurement during daylight and darkness. The instrument’s unique intelligent pointing system identifies, in real time, cloud-free areas of the atmosphere, greatly increasing the amount of useable data.

“DDC’s single board computer is a key component of the Harris-built environmental instrument with its reliability and high-speed processing,” said Paul Wloszek, Harris Environmental Solutions sensors director.

Dan Veenstra, General Manager of DDC’s Space Microelectronics group located in Poway, CA, where the SCS750 are designed and manufactured, stated: “DDC is excited to have supported the JAXA/Harris team on the success of such a key instrument for the GOSAT-2 mission, which will provide important Earth science data, contributing to global greenhouse gas observations and climate change-related policies. Our team would like to extend our congratulations to everyone involved on the successful launch and operation.

“Since inception, more than 20 years ago, our electronic components (more than 100,000 shipped) and TRL-9 Single Board Computers have experienced zero failures in space, which will help to ensure the success of the GOSAT-2 Program.”

DDC’s SCS750 series single board computers for space offer a variety of interface options, including SpaceWire, and provide up to 64 GB of error-protected NAND Flash memory, all in an industry standard 6u cPCI form factor. DDC’s single board computers provides the very good SEE performance (less than one error in 80 years) to yield high performance low-risk (TRL-9) computing solutions for the most demanding space applications.