衛星電腦

On-board Computer

衛星電腦是衛星系統之核心空電單元，作用為控制衛星本體與酬載，並維持衛星操作安全。除了提供與包含電力、S頻段遙傳／追蹤／指令、X頻段資料下傳、姿態控制、推進、及熱控等次系統及酬載之指令與遙傳資料介面，亦提供與地面電機支援設備介面以支援衛星系統整合測試。

The On-board Computer (OBC) is the core avionics of satellite system to control the spacecraft bus and payload and maintain the safety of satellite operations. In addition to provide electrical interfaces of command and telemetry with spacecraft bus subsystems, including electrical power, S-band telemetry/tracking and command, X-band downlink, attitude control, reaction control, and thermal control subsystems, and payloads, it also provides the interface with the electrical ground support equipment (EGSE) to support the satellite system integration and test. The FORMOSAT-8 OBC has a design of internal dual-redundancy, which can support the autonomous reconfiguration to keep the satellite in the safe operation when critical anomalies occur. Two banks of non-volatile MRAM in the OBC are used to store the boot loader and flight software, and the whole flight software stored can be revised in orbit. The OBC also provides functions of telecommand decoding, telemetry encoding, and payload data management and storage, with the CCSDS (Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems) format.