Computing and shielding startups join together to launch AI-capable chips into space

Sophisticated spacecraft often run on shockingly outdated computing systems: consider that the Perseverance rover runs on a PowerPC 750, the processor famous for running on iMacs in the late 1990s.

San Francisco-based Aethero is aiming to bring more powerful computing systems to orbit, and their first payload launches this month on SpaceX’s Transporter-11 rideshare mission. The computer, a small, foldable MVP called AetherNxN built on Nvidia's Orin processor, will get extra protection from a new radiation shielding material that the product's developers, Cosmic Shielding Corporation (CSC), say could help usher in a new era of computing. in space.

Today, electronics in space are protected from harmful radiation in two ways. They are physically shielded with a combination of materials such as aluminum and tantalum and are radiation resistant, which usually means they are designed to increase their resistance to radiation. AetherNxN computers are radiation-resistant, but adding CSC shielding "allows us to take AI-enabled hardware into space and make it work in very harsh environments," Aethero co-founder Edward Ge said in a recent interview. CSC screening is a new 3D printing material. The company was founded in 2020 and flying screen materials on tasks with axioms and quantum locations. Plastic steel is more flexible than aluminum, allowing it to be used in a wider range of components – the company is even working on its use in spacesuits.

The company says its materials not only reduce the total radiation dose received by computers, but are more effective than traditional materials at limiting so-called "single-event effects." This is when a single ionizing particle, such as a high-energy proton, damages or otherwise affects electronic circuits in space. (These events even occur on Earth, but are extremely rare due to the protection offered by the atmosphere.)

While reducing the overall dose is important, so is minimizing the effects of a single event. CSC co-founder and CEO Yanni Barghouty compared it to 100 tennis balls hitting a wall versus one ball; they may have the same total kinetic energy, but the latter is significantly more dangerous. Both GE and Barghouti agree that the next generation of shielding technology is needed to get advanced, complex processors into space. Aethero expects the first and largest market to be edge processing of Earth observation data, such as autonomous identification of objects of interest, but both companies see advanced edge computing in space ushering in a new era of deep space exploration. From an artificial intelligence perspective, it was once launched into space,” Barghouti said. "Therefore, this work actually brings the masonry law into space."