The hundred year spacecraft

Author

Avizienis, Algirdas

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., California Univ., Los Angeles, CA

fYear

1999

fDate

1999

Firstpage

233

Lastpage

239

Abstract

Two major steps in the evolution of autonomous, longlife spacecraft computing systems have been the demonstrations of systems with one-year and ten-year life expectancies in space. This paper discusses the design concept of a distributed, diversified self-testing and self-repairing computing system that is embedded in an autonomous spacecraft and serves as its agent for automatic maintenance. The attainment of a hundred-year life expectancy is founded on the extensive use of diversity in materials, technologies and design of hardware elements. Diversity of hardware and software designs also provides tolerance of design faults. A hierarchical system structure and a rigorous design paradigm for the fault-tolerance defenses also support the goals of autonomy and long system lifetime

Keywords

aerospace computing; fault tolerant computing; automatic maintenance; design concept; fault-tolerance defenses; hierarchical system structure; longlife spacecraft computing systems; rigorous design paradigm; self-repairing computing system; Aircraft manufacture; Built-in self-test; Distributed computing; Embedded computing; Fault tolerant systems; Hardware; Hierarchical systems; Software design; Space technology; Space vehicles;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Evolvable Hardware, 1999. Proceedings of the First NASA/DoD Workshop on

Conference_Location

Pasadena, CA

Print_ISBN

0-7695-0256-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/EH.1999.785458

Filename

785458