Ronak Samantray
2 Oct 2024
Launching MOI-TD - India's first AI-labratory in space, with ISRO PSLV
Empowering space with My Orbital Infrastructure (MOI) Satellites
MOI represents a series of nano-satellites by TakeMe2Space that enable enterprises, startups and innovators to run compute in LEO. MOI satellites enable compute in-space with access to industry specific sensors, high speed communication and reliable edge computing capabilities.
The first: MOI-TD
MOI-TD is the technical demonstration version of the MOI-1 satellite. The mission goals of MOI-TD is as follows:
Prove the idegenously build satellite subsystems in space. We are testing our OBC (On-board computer), EC (Edge Computer - enabling AI-in-space), EPS (Electronic Power System) and ADCS (Attitude Determination and Control System) components.
Upload custom AI based application from ground station to MOI-TD and execute the application for 1 orbit. Post execution the result would be downlinked to the ground station. This would be India's first AI experiment in space.
Use AI to detect day-light earth and night-time earth pictures. The aim is to be able to click the picture with right sharpness. MOI-TD would be constantly rolling, hence we are going to use the EC to process the camera feed in realtime and capture the desired media.
Design Principles of MOI-TD
Our aim is to prove all aspects (subsystem functionality & reliability, structural integrity) of the MOI series of nano-satellites. Hence we have kept MOI-TD 95% similar to our MOI series of nano-satellites.
The form factor of MOI-TD chassis is close to our nano-satellite bus.
All the sub-systems are PC-104 format and stacked inside the chassis, the exact same way one would stack up nano-satellite subsystems.
MOI-TD includes the POEM adapter board, which enables the sub-systems to be able to communicate to POEM platform for downlink & uplink tasks. Also the POEM adapter board provides 3v3, 5v and 12v power trains which are consumed the required sub-systems.
The compute environment in MOI-TD
The base compute envrionment in MOI-TD is based on Linux, enabling C/C++ and python runtimes. The micro-controller powering this environment is a single core 1GHz CPU, and has 512 MB RAM.
MOI-TD also hosts a special environment for running AI/ML models in realtime. Its powered by a GC7000 Lite Graphics GPU and Edge TPU capable of processing 4 trillion operations per second.
Experiments to be run on MOI-TD
We are running multiple experiments while MOI-TD would be in orbit. Few of the experiments have been submitted by the community space enthusiasts, and university students:
University of Southampton, Malaysia
Skillonation
ETL Tests for MOI-TD
MOI-TD has undergone rigorous testing - vibration, shock, EMI/EMC and thermovac. The following pictures show various testing snapshots.
3 axis vibration tests. The package has a reaction wheel, torquers, thermal straps and few other relatively heavy modules. Highlights the efficiency of our mechanical team.
In the below picture you can see Sharat mounting MOI-TD on to the vibration table. The control sensor was put on the fixture plate and multiple vibration sensor were placed on the MOI-TD to measure the effective vibration frequency observed at those points.
EMI/EMC tests spanning across CE, RE, RS and CS test types were performed on the payload. This test was performed at the POEM Experience Center.
Thermovac test spanned across 72 hours, undergoing thermal cycling from -20 to +60 degrees celcius. The vacuum was maintained at 0.00001 mBar pressure. Multiple temperature sensors were added to MOI-TD to measure the efficacy of our internal thermal management system and how heat was spread across the payload.