Backplanes in space

Elma has taken the first steps with Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) products for aerospace purposes. The technologies are based on CompactPCI Serial and, as a second leg, on VITA 46 / 65 Open VPX. CompactPCI Serial is widely used in trains and industrial applications such as high-speed cameras, while VPX traditionally finds its way mostly in military applications. The difference between the standard and Space versions are minor modifications for extreme environmental requirements, such as special electrolytics, a dual system slot and wider space between slots. These systems are deployed for use in satellites as the system platform and payload controller, but also are deployed on Earth as the control system and ground stations. The extension to the existing specifications is the dual star architecture for improved uptime and redundancy, but also provides the ability to use the various communication protocols common in space such as SpaceWire, TTEthernet, EtherSpace etc. An ATR rack from Elma with a cPCI Serial Space backplane will soon be launched to the ISS.