NASA engineers unveil modular avionics systems for smaller missions
NewsFebruary 28, 2017
GREENBELT, Md. A team of engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have designed a new avionics system intended for use on smaller, cost-constrained, yet high-performance missions.
The team of designers -- led by project manager and chief engineer Noosha Haghani -- unveiled what it calls "MUSTANG," an acronym for Modular Unified Space Technology Avionics for Next Generation missions. The technology acts as the mission’s brain and central nervous system, controlling every function needed to gather scientific data from a Small Explorer-type mission, which could include everything from spacecraft command and data handling to attitude control, power, and propulsion. The team also developed a variation of the system -- iMUSTANG -- to handle instrument electronics; like its namesake sibling, iMUSTANG allows users to choose different capabilities depending on instrument needs.
The Goddard team leveraged years of knowledge gained during the development of NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, or MMS, as they sought to design a significantly smaller craft-electronics system. Starting from the regular MMS system, the MUSTANG team first reduced the size of the housing box by half; following design and testing, the team created 22 lightweight, high-capability cards, including one that controls higher-speed communications of up to 1.2 gigabits per second. The two MUSTANG variations use mix-and-match electronics cards to present mission and instrument developers with
a smaller, highly modular, off-the-shelf avionics system that can be customized to meet virtually any smaller mission requirement. Haghani notes that while MUSTANG may be inappropriate for some large, flagship-style spacecraft, it is just right for deployment on smaller missions.
The two MUSTANG variations have already attracted users: NASA’s Pre-Aerosols Clouds and Ocean Ecosystems mission (PACE) and the Global Ecosystems Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) have chosen MUSTANG to run their operations and are funding development of additional capabilities that could be used in future NASA missions. Additionally, one of PACE’s baselined instruments, the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), plans to use iMUSTANG.
