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.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
October 2019
Research Article|
October 01 2019
apex: A new commercial off-the-shelf on-board computer platform for sounding rockets
Special Collection:
Materials and Life Science Experiments for the Sounding Rocket MAPHEUS
N. Maas
;
N. Maas
1
Microgravity User Support Center (MUSC), German Aerospace Center (DLR)
, 51147 Köln, Germany
Search for other works by this author on:
R. Willnecker;
R. Willnecker
b)
1
Microgravity User Support Center (MUSC), German Aerospace Center (DLR)
, 51147 Köln, Germany
Search for other works by this author on:
R. Hemmersbach;
R. Hemmersbach
2
Institute of Aerospace Medicine, Gravitational Biology, German Aerospace Center (DLR)
, 51147 Köln, Germany
Search for other works by this author on:
J. Hauslage
J. Hauslage
2
Institute of Aerospace Medicine, Gravitational Biology, German Aerospace Center (DLR)
, 51147 Köln, Germany
Search for other works by this author on:
a)
Electronic mail: [email protected].
Note: This paper is part of the Special Collection: Materials and Life Science Experiments for the Sounding Rocket MAPHEUS.
Rev. Sci. Instrum. 90, 105101 (2019)
Article history
Received:
July 05 2019
Accepted:
September 16 2019
Citation
N. Maas, R. Willnecker, R. Hemmersbach, J. Hauslage; apex: A new commercial off-the-shelf on-board computer platform for sounding rockets. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 1 October 2019; 90 (10): 105101. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5118855
Download citation file:
Pay-Per-View Access
$40.00
Sign In
You could not be signed in. Please check your credentials and make sure you have an active account and try again.
Citing articles via
Overview of the early campaign diagnostics for the SPARC tokamak (invited)
M. L. Reinke, I. Abramovic, et al.
Rydberg electromagnetically induced transparency based laser lock to Zeeman sublevels with 0.6 GHz scanning range
Alexey Vylegzhanin, Síle Nic Chormaic, et al.
An instrumentation guide to measuring thermal conductivity using frequency domain thermoreflectance (FDTR)
Dylan J. Kirsch, Joshua Martin, et al.
Related Content
The MAPHEUS module CellFix for studying the influence of altered gravity on the physiology of single cells
Rev. Sci. Instrum. (January 2020)
The German Aerospace Center M-42 radiation detector—A new development for applications in mixed radiation fields
Rev. Sci. Instrum. (December 2019)
Direct-imaging of light-driven colloidal Janus particles in weightlessness
Rev. Sci. Instrum. (January 2020)
Camera-based sample-position detection and control for microgravity electrostatic levitation
Rev. Sci. Instrum. (April 2020)