In order to supersede the aging Microchip ATMEGA328P as the de facto standard for Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) On-Board Computers (OBCs) with a more powerful system for different kinds of high-speed sensors and image acquisition applications, we developed advanced processors, encryption, and security experiment (apex). The platform consisting of a newly developed OBC using COTS components has been flight tested during the ATEK/MAPHEUS-8 sounding rocket campaign. The main advantages of the apex OBC lies in the speed and simplicity of the design while maintaining operational security with a redundant master-master microcontroller system, as well as dual flash storage within each master. Additionally, a single board computer with a containerized and failure-resistant Operating System (OS) (balenaOS) was included to allow usage of a high-definition camera or other more compute-intensive tasks. The bench and flight tests were performed successfully and already showed feasible ways to further improve operational performance.

Topics
Microcontroller, Microchips, Software engineering, Computer software, Data storage and retrieval, Image processing, Printed circuit board, Microgravity, 3D printing, Paramecium
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