Fault protection design for the command and data subsystem on the Cassini spacecraft

Author

Brown, Thomas K. ; Donaldson, James A.

Author_Institution

Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA

fYear

1994

fDate

30 Oct-3 Nov 1994

Firstpage

408

Lastpage

413

Abstract

The Cassini orbital mission is to explore the Saturnian system are much greater depth than was possible by the Voyager flyby missions. To do this, the Cassini spacecraft is comprised of a Saturn orbiter and a Titan probe. The Command and Data Subsystem (CDS) on Cassini is responsible for uplink command processing, spacecraft intercommunications and control, and downlink telemetry formatting. The 10.7 year mission life, 160 minute round-trip light time, and extended periods of operation without continuous ground communications drive the CDS design in directions of redundancy, autonomy, and fault protection to assure the mission objectives

Keywords

aerospace computing; command and control systems; fault tolerant computing; redundancy; space communication links; space telemetry; special purpose computers; 10.7 y; 160 min; Cassini orbital mission; Cassini spacecraft; Saturn orbiter; Saturnian system; Titan probe; autonomy; command and data subsystem; control; downlink telemetry formatting; fault protection; fault protection design; mission objectives; redundancy; round-trip light time; spacecraft intercommunications; uplink command processing; Downlink; Earth; Instruments; Mission critical systems; Planets; Probes; Protection; Satellites; Saturn; Space vehicles;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Digital Avionics Systems Conference, 1994. 13th DASC., AIAA/IEEE

Conference_Location

Phoenix, AZ

Print_ISBN

0-7803-2425-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/DASC.1994.369449

Filename

369449