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Goddard Space Flight Center has entered into a cooperative research agreement with a leading U.S. aerospace corporation to transfer NASA SpaceWire technology and assist the company in modifying the technology to support their own space-flight missions.

In return, NASA will have access to the modifications. According to NASA, the agreement is a step toward establishing the SpaceWire communications protocol as a de facto space-flight networking standard—which will help to save both industry and government organizations development time and resources for future missions.

Technology Description

Developed in 1999 under the auspices of the European Space Agency, SpaceWire answered a long-standing space-flight problem: no standard high-speed communications protocol existed for flight electronics. Therefore, all space-flight electronic payloads (such as processing units, on-board computers, and so on) were custom designed on a project-by-project basis, resulting in long development periods, high costs and elevated risks. The SpaceWire standard was developed as a network of nodes and routers interconnected through bi-directional, high-speed serial links—helping to limit the custom-design problem by designing a standard with flexibility, modularity and re-usability.

According to Goddard researchers, this flexible, modular, and re-usable design allows aerospace companies to standardize their designs. “SpaceWire lets you create one design that you can go to every time, for every mission,” said Goddard's Glenn Rakow, SpaceWire Development Lead.

Technology Transfer/Partnership Success

As part of the agreement, Rakow and his team will provide technical support to the company as it develops its own SpaceWire-based design changes. “We provide a government design for SpaceWire that is well tested and well verified,” said Rakow. “Then, we help the company as it works to design and standardize upper-level protocols to run on top of SpaceWire, so they can more easily use them from mission to mission.” Under the terms of the agreement, NASA will be reimbursed for its time.

According to Rakow, the current SpaceWire standard offers many advantages over other commercial protocols. “In a nutshell, it’s flexible,” explained Rakow. For example, as compared to Ethernet networks with pre-set link rates, SpaceWire offers flexible link rates, helping save power and providing more options for high-speed applications. In addition, the standard is topology-independent, meaning that connections between routers or network fabrics can be fashioned in nearly any way that suits the design’s needs. Finally, SpaceWire doesn’t define a rigid data-packet structure. “It’s very scaled down and simple, so it gives the system engineer a lot of flexibility in developing additional protocols,” said Rakow.

The new protocol designs and system engineering improvements that result from the agreement will benefit not only the company’s missions but NASA’s future government missions as well, since they will be added to the ongoing SpaceWire standard. “SpaceWire technology development can be beneficial for wider U.S. industry and government use,” explained Rakow. While the standard is tailored to space-flight systems, the technology behind it may benefit ground applications as well.        

“The more people we get using it, the more ideas we’ll have,” said Rakow. “Industry has expertise that NASA doesn’t have and vice versa, and that exchange will benefit the SpaceWire standard, as well as everyone who uses it now and in the future.”

Contact

Innovative Partnerships Program Office
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Phone: (301) 286-5810
E-mail: techtransfer@gsfc.nasa.gov

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