Advanced spacecraft often run on computing systems that are shockingly outdated: the Perseverance rover, for example, runs on a PowerPC 750, a processor famously found in iMacs in the late 1990s.
San Francisco-based Aethero is looking to bring more powerful computing systems into orbit, with its first payload launching this month on SpaceX's Transporter-11 rideshare mission. The computer, a small, stackable MVP called AetherNxN built around Nvidia Orin processors, will get the added protection of a new radiation-shielding material that could help usher in a new era of computing in space, according to the product's developer, Cosmic Shielding Corporation (CSC).
Currently, electronics in space are protected from harmful radiation in two ways: They're physically shielded with a combination of materials like aluminum and tantalum, and they're also radiation-hardened, which typically means they're designed to withstand high levels of radiation exposure. The AetherNxN computer is radiation-hardened, but the addition of CSC's shielding “will enable us to take AI-enabled hardware into space and have it operate in very harsh conditions,” Aethero co-founder Edward Ge said in a recent interview.
CSC's shielding is a new 3D-printed material the company calls Plasteel (a term borrowed from Frank Herbert's “Dune”), a polymer blend with an evenly dispersed layer of radiation-blocking nanoparticles. The company was founded in 2020 and has flown its shielding material on Axiom Space and Quantum Space missions. Plasteel is more flexible than aluminum, so it can be used for a wider range of components. The company is also working on applying it to space suits.
The company says that in addition to reducing the total amount of radiation a computer receives, its material is more effective than conventional materials at preventing what's known as a “single event effect,” a phenomenon in which a single ionizing particle, such as a high-energy proton, can damage or affect electronic circuits in space. (Such events also occur on Earth, but are extremely rare due to the protective atmosphere.)
Concept image of a custom plasteel shielding solution for space-based computers. Image courtesy of Cosmic Shielding
Reducing total exposure is important, but mitigating single-shot effects is also essential. CSC co-founder and CEO Yanni Barghouty likens this to 100 tennis balls hitting a wall versus a single bullet: The total kinetic energy may be the same, but the latter is much more dangerous.
GE and Barghouty agreed that bringing advanced, complex processors into space will require next-generation shielding technology. Aethero sees edge processing of Earth observation data (for example, autonomously identifying objects of interest) as its biggest initial market, but both companies believe advanced edge computing in space will enable a new era of deep-space exploration.
“From an AI perspective, nothing has ever been launched into space this fast before,” Barghouti said. “This literally brings Moore's Law to space.”