The New Fault Tolerant Onboard Computer for Microsatellite Missions

This paper describes an onboard computer with dual processing modules. Each processing module is composed of 32 bit ARM reduced instruction set computer processor and other commercial-off-the-shelf devices. A set of fault handling mechanisms is implemented in the computer system, which enables the system to tolerate a single fault. The onboard software is organized around a set of processes that communicate among each other through a routing process. Meeting an extremely tight set of constraints that include mass, volume, power consumption and space environmental conditions, the fault-tolerant onboard computer has excellent data processing capability that can meet the erquirements of micro-satellite missions.