Avionics Architectures for Exploration: Ongoing Efforts in Human Spaceflight

The field of Avionics is advancing far more rapidly in terrestrial applications than in spaceflight applications. Spaceflight Avionics are not keeping pace with expectations set by terrestrial experience, nor are they keeping pace with the need for increasingly complex automation and crew interfaces as we move beyond Low Earth Orbit. NASA must take advantage of the strides being made by both space-related and terrestrial industries to drive our development and sustaining costs down. This paper describes ongoing efforts by the Avionics Architectures for Exploration (AAE) project chartered by NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Program to evaluate new avionic architectures and technologies, provide objective comparisons of them, and mature selected technologies for flight and for use by other AES projects. The AAE project team includes members from most NASA centers, and from industry. It is our intent to develop a common core avionic system that has standard capabilities and interfaces, and contains the basic elements and functionality needed for any spacecraft. This common core will be scalable and tailored to specific missions. It will incorporate hardware and software from multiple vendors, and be upgradeable in order to infuse incremental capabilities and new technologies. It will maximize the use of reconfigurable open source software (e.g., Goddard Space Flight Center's (GSFC's) Core Flight Software (CFS)). Our long-term focus is on improving functionality, reliability, and autonomy, while reducing size, weight, and power. Where possible, we will leverage terrestrial commercial capabilities to drive down development and sustaining costs. We will select promising technologies for evaluation, compare them in an objective manner, and mature them to be available for future programs. The remainder of this paper describes our approach, technical areas of emphasis, integrated test experience and results as of mid-2014, and future plans. As a part of the AES Program, we are encouraged to set aggressive goals and fall short if necessary, rather than to set our sights too low. We are also asked to emphasize providing our personnel with hands-on experience in development, integration, and testing. That we have embraced both of these philosophies will be evident in the descriptions below.