NASA is actively seeking to answer fundamental questions about life beyond Earth through groundbreaking science and exploration missions: 

• Are we alone? 
• What does tomorrow bring? 
• How is our universe changing?  

For future space missions seeking to answer these questions, there is a need for significant advances in onboard computing. Required advances in computing include navigation and control systems, complex science instruments, robotic science sample acquisition and return, communications, autonomous robotic operations, crewed instrument health and safety monitoring, power generation and management, and autonomous fault handling and recovery.

However, space presents challenges to computing. Radiation in the space environment can cause long-term damage to electronic components and cause errors that disrupt computing. Missions beyond Earth orbit can also present a high demand for onboard computing resources because of the time delay to communicate to and from Earth. This communication latency drives the need for many space activities to be performed autonomously and in real-time onboard, without any assistance from ground controllers on Earth. Performing these onboard functions involves running many types of computational workloads in the space environment, including advanced autonomy, AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning, image and signal processing, data flow management, and object detection and classification. All of these workloads require advances in onboard computing technology to meet the demands of increasingly complex missions.

NASA’s Planetary Decadal Study provides the U.S. with a 10 -year roadmap for space exploration and concludes that future missions demand extensive computational and autonomous capabilities that cannot be met by legacy space processors.  

Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and funded by the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington, the High Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) project closes that requirements gap.

High Performance

The HPSC project will provide high performance AI dataflow processing with scalable vector computing capabilities that are critical for the science and autonomy needs of future advanced space systems.

Fault-Tolerant

This project is specially designed to survive in hazardous space environments and contains features that ensure it can provide reliable results in the harshest of space environments. This capability ensures the execution of critical operations, such as robotically landing or flying on another planet, supporting astronauts in deep space, or operating near small bodies in the outer solar system.

Power Optimized

Because electrical power is a vital resource in space, HPSC is designed to be adaptable in terms of power usage and computing performance. This flexibility allows dynamic, granular control of functions that can be turned off when they are not in use or put into lower power modes. Due to this flexibility to tailor power and performance, the HPSC processor can be used across missions with widely ranging power requirements and can be uniquely suited for missions where the power budget and performance needs vary significantly between mission phases.

Connectivity

Using advanced Ethernet networking technologies, HPSC can connect to a wide array of sensors and other devices. Using these same connectivity technologies, multiple HPSC’s can be connected together to build bigger systems with enhanced capabilities.

Built on Industry-Standards

The core of the HPSC design is an industry standard, open-source instruction set architecture, bundled with significant fault tolerance, radiation tolerance, and a full security suite as well as all the software required to run it. The HPSC also includes a suite of features and industry-standard interfaces and protocols.

High Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) is the brain of the spacecraft, coordinating and executing the necessary functions to ensure mission success.

Processing Data

Handles vast amounts of data generated by spacecraft instruments and sensors, performing complex calculations and data analysis in real-time.

Control Systems

Runs the software that controls the spacecraft’s various subsystems, such as navigation, communication, power management, and scientific instruments.

Communications

Manages data communication between the spacecraft and ground control, ensuring that mission data is transmitted efficiently and commands from Earth are received and executed correctly.

Autonomous Operations

Supports autonomous decision-making capabilities, allowing the spacecraft to perform tasks without real-time human intervention, which is crucial for missions far from Earth.

Error Handling

Includes fault tolerance and error correction features to ensure reliable operation in the harsh environment of space, where radiation and extreme temperatures can affect electronic components.

The NASA HPSC project is being developed in collaboration with Microchip Technology Inc. and led by a team of engineers at NASA JPL with significant research and development contributions from Microchip.

The HPSC project has been active since 2021 and will produce its first processors in early 2025, followed by demonstrations on future NASA or commercial space platforms. This project will advance spaceflight computing needs, offering an unprecedented opportunity for scientific return, future advancements, and upgrades in space computing systems. It will benefit not only NASA and commercial space companies, but also has applications in automotive, consumer, industrial, and aerospace and defense industries. The HPSC processor will be commercially available from Microchip with broad ecosystem and industry support.

NASA is leading the SOSAᵀᴹ (Sensor Open Systems Architectureᵀᴹ) Space Subcommittee to foster an interoperable spaceflight avionics standard, which is key to the establishment of an ecosystem that will support the HPSC processor. The SOSA Space Subcommittee has developed significant ecosystem involvement from commercial space providers and is delivering interoperable, industry standard specifications that industry and government can use to build efficient and performant systems.