Topics
Latest
AI
Amazon
Image Credits:Aethero
Apps
Biotech & Health
clime
Image Credits:Aethero
Cloud Computing
Commerce
Crypto
Concept image of a custom plasteel shielding solution for a space-based computer.Image Credits:Cosmic Shielding
Enterprise
EVs
Fintech
fund-raise
gizmo
Gaming
Government & Policy
Hardware
layoff
Media & Entertainment
Meta
Microsoft
secrecy
Robotics
protection
Social
outer space
Startups
TikTok
Transportation
Venture
More from TechCrunch
Events
Startup Battlefield
StrictlyVC
newssheet
Podcasts
Videos
Partner Content
TechCrunch Brand Studio
Crunchboard
reach Us
advanced spacecraft often run on shockingly superannuated computing systems : view that the Perseverance rover run on a PowerPC 750 , the processor famous for running on iMacs in the later 1990s .
San Francisco - basedAetherois aimingto lend more powerful computing systems to revolve , and their first payload launches this calendar month on SpaceX ’s Transporter-11 rideshare mission . The computer , a minor , stackable MVP called AetherNxN that ’s work up on an Nvidia Orin processor , will be contract extra protection from a new radiation shielding material that the product ’s developers , Cosmic Shielding Corporation(CSC ) , say could help unlock a Modern era for calculate in space .
Today , electronics in space are protected from harmful radiation in two ways . They ’re physically shield , using some combination of materials like aluminium and Ta , and they ’re radiation hardened , which by and large mean that they ’re design in ways that increase their tolerance to radiation exposure . The AetherNxN computing machine is radian - hardened , but adding CSC ’s shielding “ enables us to make for that AI - capable of hardware into space and have it control under these very uncongenial conditions , ” Aethero cofounder Edward Ge say in a recent interview .
CSC ’s shielding is an Modern , 3D printed fabric that the company calls Plasteel ( a term that go back to Frank Herbert’sDune ): a polymer blend with a uniformly distributed bed of irradiation - blocking nanoparticles . The party was launch in 2020 and has fly a its shielding textile on missions with Axiom Space and Quantum Space . Plasteel is more pliable than aluminum , allowing it to be used for a wider variety of components — the party is even working on adapt it for place suit .
The party enunciate that its fabric not only reduces the overall dose of radiation received by the computer , but is also more efficient than traditional materials at restrain what ’s known as “ exclusive case effects . ” This is when a undivided ionizing subatomic particle , like a high-pitched push proton , terms or otherwise affects an electronic circuit in outer space . ( These events even fall out on Earth , but it ’s extremely rare because of the security offered by the atmosphere . )
While reducing overall dose is important , extenuate exclusive event outcome is also critical . CSC co - founder and CEO Yanni Barghouty likened it to 100 lawn tennis ball hitting a rampart versus a individual bullet ; they may have the same total kinetic muscularity , but the latter is considerably more dangerous .
Both Ge and Barghouty agreed that next - coevals shielding technology will be take to bring advance , complex processors to blank . Aethero anticipatesits first and gravid marketbeing boundary processing for Earth reflection data — for instance , autonomously identifying interesting object — but both companies see a unexampled era of deep space exploration being enabled by modern boundary compute in space .
Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI
Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI
“ Nothing this tight , from an AI standpoint , has ever been launched into outer space , ” Barghouty enjoin . “ So having this work as it does is literally bringing Moore ’s law of nature into space . ”
