Advanced fault tolerant computing for future manned space missions

Planet Mars has been at the focal point of astronomical attention. As we enter the next millennium, Mars will play a key role in humanity's successful expansion into heliocentric space. Future Mars space transportation will require reliable operations over a lifespan of years. Unlike other long life deep space missions, human Mars operations require real-time masking of critical faults. This paper discusses Mars stringent baseline requirements and constraints and presents fault-tolerant approaches, techniques, and design building block strategies that include standby redundancy, reconfigurable voting, backup sparing, and graceful degradation. The contemporary approach and recognized inadequacies of their application to long duration space missions will be discussed. Certain problems will be identified and viable solutions offered. Various aspects of fault tolerant designs and implementations are discussed including component selection, radiation tolerance, high-density packaging technology, computational integrity, and fault coverage. Architectural solutions that can make systems affordable such as open systems, standardization, and ease of validation will be highlighted. The paper concludes with a technology demonstration plan to achieve the desired baseline requirements and goals.