Equip satellites with intelligent brains ! The scientific research results of Zhijiang Laboratory w

Mondo Science Updated on 2024-02-05

On the morning of February 3, the sea near Yangjiang in Guangdong Province was calm.

Zhang Yabing, the space-based computing system research center of Zhijiang Laboratory, stood not far from the launch ship of the Jielong-3 carrier rocket, waiting for the launch of Dongfang Huiyan Gaofen 01 satellite with full attention.

At 11:06, a long fire dragon erupted, rockets soared from the sea, and the crowd burst into cheers.

The sound of the rocket piercing the air grew louder and louder, and a strong air current rushed towards the face. Zhang Yabing said.

Source: Xinhua News Agency.

The high-performance intelligent processing payload of the "Aurora 1000-Huiyan" intelligent spaceborne computer of the Oriental Insight 01 satellite is the research and development result of his team.

With the smooth launch of the satellite into orbit, the difficulties and pressures encountered in the research and development process turned into a sense of pride and accomplishment at that moment, and Zhang Yabing could not hide his excitement.

Back to 9 months ago, the first phase of the Oriental Insight Intelligent Remote Sensing Constellation was launched, and Zhang Yabing's team received the task of developing high-performance intelligent processing payloads for satellites.

The high-performance intelligent processing payload is equivalent to the intelligent "brain" of the satellite.

The images taken by traditional remote sensing satellites need to be transmitted to the ground for processing, but the satellite-to-ground transmission bandwidth is limited, and a large number of images on the satellite are often too late to be transmitted to the ground. Moreover, traditional remote sensing satellites cannot make real-time judgment and recognition of images, and the images transmitted to the ground are likely to be invalid images covered by clouds. Zhang Yabing introduced.

"Aurora 1000" can provide low-cost, low-power, high-computing power, intelligent remote sensing data computing capabilities, equipped with "Aurora 1000" Oriental Insight Gaofen 01 star, can directly carry out cloud judgment, compression and target recognition in the sky.

Intelligence is the biggest highlight of this satellite.

Zhang Yabing introduced that the key technical indicators such as computing power and efficiency ratio of "Aurora 1000" are at the leading level in China. Moreover, through redundant design and fault-tolerant design, the research and development cost of the entire load is greatly reduced.

At the end of October 2023, after professional evaluation, the structure, hardware interface, performance parameters, and business functions of "Aurora 1000" met the design standards, and successfully passed the acceptance of the satellite platform and completed the delivery, becoming the first actual delivery product carried by Zhijiang Laboratory on a commercial satellite.

After returning to the Zhijiang Laboratory from the Sea Launch Platform, Zhang Yabing had to devote himself to the research and development of space-based computing systems non-stop.

The space-based center has a "large army" of more than 200 people, and more than 90% of them are post-center.

What we want to do is the 'cloud brain in the sky', this road is full of challenges, there are countless days and nights of development, countless verification experiments waiting for us, but we are willing to fight once. Yan Diying, an engineer at the Space-based Computing System Research Center, said firmly.

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