
The scientific objectives and payloads of Chang’E4 mission [pdf] - reindeerer
http://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/bibl/inostr-yazyki/planetary-and-space-science/2018/Jia_et_al_The_Chang-E-4_Mission_Planetary_and_Space_Science_in_press_(2017).pdf
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codezero
This is really neat. I worked on a satellite from 2006-2012 that had a RISC
processor from ~1993 if I remember correctly. Radiation hardened processors
trail behind the modern tech pretty far, but luckily, most spacecraft aren't
doing too much processing on board.

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reindeerer
What i found intriguing is that Xilinx Q-Pro family is supposedly ITAR-
controlled, so how are Chinese running those on the far side of the moon is ..
an interesting question.

Further, googling "XQR2V3000" "AT697F" and together returns some interesting
results from UK based research ..

Also, Chang'e actually does impressive amounts of processing on board, as they
employ vision-based autonomous guidance algorithms for landing. Thats
unprecedented

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codezero
That's really interesting, it hadn't occurred to me that an FPGA would ever
fall under ITAR, then again, after quickly scanning Wikipedia, I didn't even
realize things like night vision fall under that too, but I guess it makes
sense.

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hatsunearu
Yeah, a lot of devices that are powerful enough (subject to fudging) that are
uncommitted but can be committed to Bad Stuff seems to be ITAR regulated.
Another thing that might be the trigger is processors with real time
capabilities.

I was surprised to see that the Beaglebone (with its very powerful PRU) was
ITAR regulated, but the Raspberry Pi (not a lot of real time stuff) wasn't.

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reindeerer
AM335x PRUs are exactly the reason why its under ITAR. Hard-realtime running
alongside general-purpose OS

