Reliable Management Services for COTS-based Space Systems and Applications

Hybrid spacecraft processing platforms that combine radiation-hardened components with commercialgrade COTS components have the potential to dramatically improve performance while reducing overall project cost and risk. However, the susceptibility of COTS components to single-event upsets and other radiation effects can diminish their benefits without adequate mitigation techniques. As a major step towards a prototype system, a management service has been investigated and developed to improve the performance and reliability of a COTS-based, processing platform for space under development at Honeywell Inc. and the University of Florida for an upcoming NASA New Millennium Program mission. The emphasis of this paper is to present our design approach then analyze and quantify the performance characteristics of this management software and system through various experiments with case studies using typical space imaging kernels. In addition, several design constraints are analyzed to determine the scalability of the system.