Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine October 2017 - 9

Leppinen
The Dove satellites use COTS x86 processors in their main
computers and run Ubuntu server. 0.5 terabytes of solid-state storage is available to support the imaging operations. Planet chose
Linux to be able to rapidly reconfigure the OS properties for their
mission-specific purposes. Some of the image processing is performed on-board, using open source imaging processing software.
Part of the processing includes discarding images that are unusable
due to cloud cover; avoiding downlinking such images can save
downlink bandwidth. The constellations operated by Planet have
successfully provided Earth imagery for several years [24], [25].

SPACEX
SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, operates the Falcon family of launch vehicles and the unmanned Dragon spacecraft. Falcon
9, shown in Figure 5, is a commercially operated orbital launch
vehicle. Dragon, shown in Figure 6, is currently used to supply the
International Space Station and is planned to be man-rated in the
near future. The goal of the company, as stated by Elon Musk, is to
eventually establish human presence on Mars [27], [28].
SpaceX uses ordinary electronics parts in their flight electronics, as opposed to dedicated radiation-hardened parts, since systems can be made radiation tolerant with redundancy, and COTS
components are easier to work with. The Dragon flight computer
consists of three computer units, each of which has two indepen-

Figure 5.

Falcon 9 uses Linux in its avionics. Photo: NASA.

Figure 6.

Dragon, controlled by Linux-based avionics, arriving at the ISS. Photo: NASA.

OCTOBER 2017

IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE

9



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