Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt developed a hybrid computing system at NASA's, Maryland. The technology behind this ambitious experiment is for testing a relative navigation and autonomous docking capability known as Raven.
According to NASA, the Raven project was developed by SSPD i.e. Satellite Servicing Projects Division. This carryon luggage sized module was launched on 19th February abroad. The SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, along with other experiments were deployed outside the International Space Station on an experiment pallet.
Raven is a testing and maturing visible, lidar and infrared sensors and machine-vision algorithm. This module will bring NASA one step closer to groundbreaking autopilot capability that can be applied to many NASA missions for decades to come.
According to PHYS ORG, Goddard Director, Christopher Scolese said that Raven module is equipped with technology that lays the foundation for the relative navigation system. There is another fact about Raven which maybe not fully appreciated is that the sensors of Raven could not do their job if it weren't for another very effective technology called Space cube. The processor of Space cube is behind the scenes technology that is making this important demonstration possible.
Space Cube is a very fast flight computing platform that Goddard technologists first demonstrated during a relative navigation experiment on the Hubble Servicing Mission-4 in 2009. The Raven experiment module sensors serve as the eyes. The deputy division director of SSPD, Ben Reed said that Space Cube acts as the brain and analyses data which tells components what to do. The "eyes" and the "brain" together create the autopilot capability.
Raven's foundational technologies will be applied in future missions also. Along with Space Cube 2.0, the Space Cube 1.0 is also being used as the communication interface between the space station's data services and multiple experiments on the pallet. In addition, a miniaturised version of Space Cube 2.0 and Space Cube Mini is going to operate in NASA and U.S. Defense Department experiments. NASA also is also testing two other miniature computers which are developed with the University of Florida. These models are mostly equipped with commercial parts.
