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Hardware-Accelerated Wavefront Sensing and Control

Completed TRL 3 (started at 2, targeting 3)

Description

The proposal develops a portable digital-signal-processing board that enables a new optical- system architecture for space-telescope systems, while leveraging pre-existing NASA wavefront-sensing (WFS) technology.

This approach provides near real-time correction of system misalignments and disturbances, allowing diffraction-limited imaging performance with reduced mass, power, and hardware requirements, compared to conventional architectures using analog sensors or ground-based control loops. Image-based WFS requires a greater number of floating- point operations per unit-time, increasing overall system latency. Our solution to this latency is an on-board, radiation-hard, computing architecture.

Benefits

N/A

Details

Technology areaFlight Computing and Avionics > Avionics Systems and Subsystems > Low-Power Embedded Computer Systems
ProgramCenter Independent Research & Development: GSFC IRAD (GSFC IRAD)
Lead organizationGoddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Start date2013-10-01
End date2015-09-30

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