Scientists Use Raspberry Pi Tech To Protect NASA Telescope Data (theregister.com) 38
Richard Speed reports via The Register: Scientists have revealed how data from a NASA telescope was secured thanks to creative thinking and a batch of Raspberry Pi computers. The telescope was the Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT), launched on April 16, 2023, from Wanaka Airport in New Zealand. The telescope was raised to approximately 33km in altitude by NASA's 532,000-cubic-meter (18.8-million-cubic-foot) balloon and, above circa 99.5 percent of the Earth's atmosphere, it spent over a month circumnavigating the globe and acquiring observations of astronomical objects. The plan had been for the payload to transmit its data to the ground using SpaceX's Starlink constellation and the US Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). However, the Starlink connection went down soon after launch, on May 1, and the TDRSS connection became unstable on May 24. The boffins decided to attempt a landing on May 25 due to poor communications and concerns the balloon might be pulled away from further land crossings by weather.
The telescope itself was destroyed during the landing; it was dragged along the ground for 3km by a parachute that failed to detach, leaving a trail of debris in its wake. Miraculously, though, SuperBIT's solid-state drive was recovered intact. However, other than as a reference, its data was not needed thanks to the inclusion of Raspberry Pi-powered hardware in the form of four Data Recovery System (DRS) capsules. Each capsule included a Raspberry Pi 3B and 5TB of solid-state storage. A parachute, a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver, and an Iridium short-burst data transceiver were also included so the hardware could report its location to the recovery team. The capsules were connected to the main payload via Ethernet, and 24V DC was also available.
The plan had been to release the first DRS capsule on day 40, and then another every 20 days after that, whenever SuperBIT passed over land. However, when it became clear that SuperBIT would have to come down on May 25, it was decided to drop two DRS capsules over Argentina's Santa Cruz Province. Both of the DRS capsules released were recovered from their reported locations -- a curious cougar apparently nosed around one of them without causing damage -- and the data was fully intact. Of the unreleased DRS capsules, one failed for unknown reasons at launch -- the team speculated that perhaps a cable came loose -- but the other also contained an intact data set.
The telescope itself was destroyed during the landing; it was dragged along the ground for 3km by a parachute that failed to detach, leaving a trail of debris in its wake. Miraculously, though, SuperBIT's solid-state drive was recovered intact. However, other than as a reference, its data was not needed thanks to the inclusion of Raspberry Pi-powered hardware in the form of four Data Recovery System (DRS) capsules. Each capsule included a Raspberry Pi 3B and 5TB of solid-state storage. A parachute, a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver, and an Iridium short-burst data transceiver were also included so the hardware could report its location to the recovery team. The capsules were connected to the main payload via Ethernet, and 24V DC was also available.
The plan had been to release the first DRS capsule on day 40, and then another every 20 days after that, whenever SuperBIT passed over land. However, when it became clear that SuperBIT would have to come down on May 25, it was decided to drop two DRS capsules over Argentina's Santa Cruz Province. Both of the DRS capsules released were recovered from their reported locations -- a curious cougar apparently nosed around one of them without causing damage -- and the data was fully intact. Of the unreleased DRS capsules, one failed for unknown reasons at launch -- the team speculated that perhaps a cable came loose -- but the other also contained an intact data set.
So, subby, can you explain, (Score:3)
how is solid state storage "Raspberry pie" technology, as it isn't clear from the summary or from TFA. Are you implying that if a BeagleBone or whatever has been used, the data would have been lost?
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Please don't bash raspberry pies! Although I have absolutely zero experience with them. I hear from my sources that they are nifty little devices. Look at jetson nanos if you need gpu power. I sure wish I had the time to play with those a little. /s
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Raspberry pies are unorthodox but still only good for eating.
The original Jetson Nano is nice -- even its CPU alone is faster than a Raspberry Pi 3 and about as fast [adafruit.com] as a RPi4. On the other hand, it's stuck with an old version of Ubuntu in its standard image (18.04, which is now in its Extended Security Maintenance phase, although you can put 20.04 on it) and Nvidia's current drivers/images no longer support it. There are newer Jetson dev kits, but they're much more expensive ($499 and up vs $149), making
Re: So, subby, can you explain, (Score:3)
If the current drivers don't support the old hardware that's a good reason not to buy the new hardware... They will just abandon it.
Ironically that's part of why Nvidia GPUs are good buys, they offer driver support for longer than AMD or Intel.
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They seem to have had some kind of LAN inside the vehicle, which the Pis were able to receive data from and log independently. It's a nice system because it allows for redundancy, but any small and fairly low power SBC could be used. I guess Pis used to be easily available, and are easy to use because every issue has been seen and debugged already.
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uh, I believe you need to work on your reading comprehension:
included a Raspberry Pi 3B and 5TB of solid-state storage
Note the usage of the article and the the conjunction.
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"Solid state storage" is not "Raspberry pie technology", as the raspberry pie company has nothing to do with its development, they just bolt it on and compile the drivers. The "raspberry pie" part in this set up can be replaced with just about any other similar device, of which there are many, gumstixes, beaglebones, jetsons and whatnot.
"SuperBITs solid-state drive was recovered intact" (Score:3, Insightful)
Cool story dude
WTF? (Score:2)
WTF?
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I certainly was, although with it having started in New Zealand and flown over Argentina it may well have stayed south of the equator.
Lots of failures (Score:2)
One parachute, two communications networks, and one DRS system. That's more than I'd expect, given how reliable technology is these days, but I suppose it may be within normal range for this sort of low-profile mission.
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Quantity has a quality all its own. Redundant array of inexpensive devices. And so on. Unless there are serious SWaP, product lifetime or similar constraints, it can easily be better to spend money on parts of a project besides high-reliability components.
It's hard to tell from this puff piece, but those faults may have been from using equipment well outside its design parameters, which tends to send reliability down the tubes.
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I love armchair engineers.
because it's NASA the result was a success even though there are multiple as you say fuck ups including no less than two satellite comms constellations out of their control not working as planned plus unexpectedly severe weather. They had 4 redundant systems which I'm sure any asshat would claim is "over engineered"', but it made the mission a success.
Amateurs don't usually launch balloons as high for as long with nearly such large payloads, and there are plenty of fuck ups there t
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"Miraculously, though, SuperBIT's solid-state drive was recovered intact."
So the Pi's had no effect on the success of the mission. The data was on the SSD anyway.
And they could have used Banana Pi's.
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So what are you so pissed off about? That the supposed diversity hires has a successful mission?
And should is not the same as could. Using it would be inane up try and save $5 by using a banana pi when it would cost vastly more in time setting it up, and of course dealing with new versions when the much shorter supply window closes.
You're an armchair engineer at best sms that's a disservice to both engineers and armchairs.
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I am pointing out an error of fact.
You demented moron.
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You're on a thread titled. "Diversity hires" writing in support of the original poster who was complaining about that.
It's funny how you think your inability to read somehow reflects on me.
The mission was a success and a bunch of idiots are whining about that because I don't know they wanted it to be a failure and have an irrational dislike of raspberry pi because their favorite bangood knockoff has 50% more performance for half the cost and a thousand times the effort or they can scrape cheap PC towers of
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No, I am writing to get the facts straight, not in support of the original poster.
Only you think that, or that he is disparaging Pi's, of any sort.
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They might have been motivated by the experiences of BLAST [wikipedia.org]. Their gondola got dragged 200 km across the Antarctic ice. The were also able to recover their data but it was a close call. There is an interesting documentary [imdb.com] about that mission.
Oh yeah (Score:4, Informative)
People relying on starkink also use rasperry pi because it saves them a few euro.
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More likely because The RPi is small and low power, and very quick to deploy. Sure they could do better with an MCU and FreeRTOS, but it would take more time and R&D. You can just buy an off-the-shelf Pi* and throw it in there, running normal Linux.
* Okay, supply has been very poor for a few years now.
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The raspberry pi is not low power. An the options are not "raspberry pi or mcu with freedos".
There are a number of modules in all varieties whic hall run linux.
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The Raspberry Pi is a reasonably standard design that has gone into production and is still easily and readily available today. That's likely why it was used.
There's also a lot of people who know it, and it's relatively easy to use various HATs with it or design your own.
Sure there are other things that run Linux, but the track record of the Raspberry Pi pretty much ensures they're easy to obtain from multiple sources (i.e., there are distributors for them - if you really needed one tomorrow you can probabl
Curious cougar? (Score:2)
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translation: the pen tester that discovered the payload was using the Curious Cougar Ubuntu release.
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Old (mission) does young (storage tech).
Open Source Design (Score:3)
This academic article [mdpi.com] in (open access) journal Aerospace gets into much more detail about the design and use.
And, best of all, the DRS pod design is documented at this github repo [github.com].
Boffin isn't a word (Score:1)
You'd think a country called "England" would have newspapers that write in English, but that would make too much sense.
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I do it all the time, and if I forget myself, I also tend to put href= before the opening quote.
marginal improvement over 65 years.... (Score:1)
so... marginal improvement from the concept that literally did this in the 60's but from space based spy satellites? (dropping much more delicate items, at much higher altitudes/speeds)
the fact that such a simple solution wasn't 100% reliable is actually very sad and troubling...