2026-06-27 15:19 UTC
The brain of the spacecraft is a redundant Attitude and Orbit Control Subsystem (AOCS) set up in a hot-standby configuration. If the primary computer takes a fatal radiation hit or suffers a hardware failure, the backup instantly takes over. The AOCS runs on an aerospace Real-Time Operating System (RTOS). This guarantees that critical tasks execute at the exact millisecond required, no matter how busy the CPU is with background math.
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@wawn@mastodon.social 2026-06-27 15:20
At the core of the AOCS is a radiation-hardened HR5000 64-bit RISC CPU. It clocks up to 200 MHz while sipping just 4 to 6 Watts of power. The AOCS guides the spacecraft using data from navigation sensors (the Optical Navigation Camera and Star Tracker) connected via a SpaceWire interface. Hayabusa2♯ relies on the deterministic SpaceWire-D protocol. Photo: JAXA