A spacecraft control electronics system provides multi-functionality to a
spacecraft in a single electronics box. The system is subdivided into a
plurality of modular electronic subunits. Each of the modular subunits
plugs into a backplane in the electronics box and is positioned
side-by-side. A serial data bus in the backplane of the box interconnects
the modular subunits to each other. The data bus provides fully redundant,
standard interfacing for the modular subunits. The plurality of electronic
subunits provides spacecraft attitude determination, control, telemetry
and command and data processing functions to the spacecraft as one unit.
The electronics box connects to the spacecraft harness via external
connectors. The spacecraft has a minimum number of harness connections as
a result of the integrated functions in the spacecraft control electronics
system. The control system applies selective internal redundancy in its
subunits. The CPU subunit has triple mode redundancy through three
microprocessors that are voted together to detect and correct errors due
to single event upsets. The T&C/GPS subunit has an embedded GPS receiver
that performs attitude determination as well as orbital positioning. The
modular subunits have a built in self-test that verifies minute circuitry
interconnections and detects faults automatically. The subunits are tested
as stand-alone subunits, as a part of the spacecraft control electronics
system, and/or as part of the spacecraft level integration using this
automated built-in self test capability. Faults in the subunits or the
system are detected in seconds. The built in self-test feature also
provides an end-to-end spacecraft harness verification automatically in
minutes. Defective modular subunits are removed and replaced with
substitute modular subunits during spacecraft level integration.