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Completed TRL 3 (started at 1, targeting 3)
Design a low cost, compact, solid-state data recorder for suborbital vehicles. The recorder will have a 45 GB minimum capacity and a record rate of at least 400 Mbps. Cost for recurring units will be nearly an eighth of the cost of commercial units with similar capabilities.
The circuit board central to this design will take in data from a bus that it masters. That bus will be parallel and likely implemented using a stack through connector. The board will packetize the data. It will then tag it with time and an indication of the device that sourced it. The board will also require a port for configuration and diagnostics amd may require an additional port to read the memory. The board will also have an interface for time stamping. That interface would be either IRIGB or GPS. If GPS is used, the data could eventually be tagged with position as well, but the position feature is not covered by this proposal.
The backplane bus when initialized will wait for one or more external interface cards to request a time slice of bus access. The mainboard will acknowledge the highest priority interface card thereby allowing it to record at least one frame of tagged data before acknowledging the next interface. An additional future enhancement could allow multiple slower devices to record at the same time by splitting the backplane data path.
Recording data on a sounding rocket is desirable. It eliminates the need for redundant and more complicated ground assets. It also makes data that may have previously been deemed desirable but unobtainable seem conveniently accessible.
As the owner of this intellectual property NASA will benefit by controlling its growth and configuration. We will be less susceptible to changes in the marketplace and will also be able to take advantage of higher-speed memories as they become available.
Cost per unit will be dependent on the number of interface boards needed for a specific mission but it could be as low as $7K.
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This is early/mid-stage (TRL 3) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.
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