Computing and Shielding Startups Unite to Bring AI-Capable Chips to Space

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Sophisticated spacecraft often rely on outdated computing systems. For instance, the Perseverance rover runs on a PowerPC 750, a processor that was popular in iMacs in the late 1990s.

San Francisco-based Aethero aims to revolutionize this by introducing more powerful computing systems to orbit. Their first payload is set to launch this month on SpaceX's Transporter-11 rideshare mission. The computer, a small, stackable MVP called AetherNxN built on an Nvidia Orin processor, will be protected by a new radiation shielding material developed by Cosmic Shielding Corporation (CSC).

Today, electronics in space are protected from harmful radiation through physical shielding using materials like aluminum and tantalum, and radiation hardening, which involves designing them to increase their tolerance to radiation exposure. The AetherNxN computer is radiation-hardened, but the addition of CSC's shielding enables it to operate in hostile conditions.

CSC's shielding is a 3D printed material called Plasteel, a polymer blend with a uniformly distributed layer of radiation-blocking nanoparticles. The company, founded in 2020, has already flown its shielding material on missions with Axiom Space and Quantum Space. Plasteel is more flexible than aluminum, allowing it to be used for a wider variety of components, including space suits.

The company claims that its material reduces the overall dose of radiation received by the computer and is more effective at limiting "single event effects," which occur when a single ionizing particle damages or affects an electronic circuit in space.

Concept image of a custom plasteel shielding solution for a space-based computer.

Both Aethero and CSC agree that next-generation shielding technologies are necessary to bring advanced, complex processors to space. Aethero anticipates its first and largest market being edge processing for Earth observation data, but both companies see a new era of deep space exploration being enabled by advanced edge compute in space.

"Nothing this fast, from an AI standpoint, has ever been launched into space," said CSC co-founder and CEO Yanni Barghouty. "So having this work as it does is literally bringing Moore's law into space."