At 11:14 on January 15, the "Tianzhi 2" D star developed by the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences was launched at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center on the Long March 2D carrier rocket and successfully entered the predetermined orbit.
"Different from previous satellites, the 'Tianzhi-2' D star no longer has separate satellite systems, attitude control, and digital control systems." Zhao Junsuo, a researcher at the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Science and Technology Daily reporter that thanks to the up to 40TOPS (that is, Trillions of operations per second) satellite-borne computing power, the satellite software realizes full deployment on a unified micro-cloud computing platform for the first time, and then drives intelligent scheduling and computing.
The basis of intelligence is "data sharing"
In 2017, Li Meng, vice minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology, pointed out in his interpretation of the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" that the new generation of artificial intelligence is mainly artificial intelligence based on big data.
For more than five years, artificial intelligence on the ground has gradually realized data sharing and data driving.
In the aerospace field, due to organizational structure and computing power and other reasons, data has always been confined within the subsystem.
"For example, the star sensor is an important part of the satellite attitude control system. The data it acquires can only be used for satellite attitude control in the past. These data are also useful for other tasks such as image acquisition. Can they be used?" Zhao Junsuo said. , The space-based supercomputing platform independently developed on the D star of "Tianzhi II" can break the original division of subsystems, realize data sharing, and drive intelligent computing.
According to reports, the "Tianzhi II" D star adopts the innovative architecture design of intelligent computing engine + switch + intelligent components for the first time in terms of hardware.
As a "hub", the switch connects various computing engines to the top, and connects super resolution cameras, wide-field cameras, measurement and control magnets, inertial measurement units and other components to the bottom, forming a new model of "joint control and joint use".
"The advantage of 'joint control and joint use' is that it not only reduces the complexity of interface design, but also improves the utilization rate of storage and computing resources." Zhao Junsuo said, "Tianzhi 2" D star is small in size and high in energy, so the requirements were raised during design. Adopting a compact structure, while ensuring high spaceborne computing power and achieving meter-level ground resolution, it is small in size, only 19 kg.
"Openness" makes satellites smarter and smarter
"Evolving capabilities are a higher stage of intelligence." Zhao Junsuo said that scientific research work should be based on the long-term, especially for scientific research projects for deep space exploration, and a system framework for upgrading, evolution, and iteration should be reserved in the design.
For this reason, the software design of the "Tianzhi II" D star adopts the Tianzhi software stack with an open system architecture.
According to Zhao Junsuo, its performance is similar to that of "Android" in the mobile phone system, and it has good openness. It is equipped with a special integrated platform for development, operation and maintenance, which can be quickly iterated and continuously evolved, thereby continuously improving the intelligence level of satellites in orbit.
This system greatly reduces the "threshold" for satellite applications to be uploaded to space for testing: satellite applications only need to be uploaded to the system, and the satellite attitude can be automatically adjusted according to the shooting task, and the image data can be processed on-orbit in real time by using artificial intelligence technology , automatically select the ground station and establish a connection to download the data to the ground as soon as possible.
Therefore, the difficulty of ground tasks on the D star of "Tianzhi II" will be greatly reduced, and the timeliness of information will also be greatly improved.
According to reports, after the "Tianzhi-2" D star enters orbit, it will carry out a new generation of intelligent satellite architecture and space-based intelligent software stack verification tests in orbit for the first time to evaluate the in-orbit application efficiency of multi-party algorithms and models.
During the in-orbit period, the joint research and development unit Space-based Integrated Information System Key Laboratory (software assembly), Hunan Hangsheng (hardware assembly), National Defense University, Beijing Maiya, Tianxieli, Xi'an Huanyu, Tianjin Yunyao, etc. Members of the Software Defined Satellite Technology Alliance jointly manage and use it.
According to Zhao Junsuo, the Institute of Software of the Chinese Academy of Sciences will jointly develop more new technology test satellites with the member units of the Software Defined Satellite Technology Alliance, build a Tianzhi test constellation, and accelerate the evolution of Tianzhi software stack, Tianzhi protocol stack and other software-defined satellite technologies. Speed, and carry out continuous technological innovation for the construction and operation and maintenance of mega-constellations.
(Science and Technology Daily reporter Zhang Jiaxing)