Radiation tolerant S-A2300 AI supercomputer completes LEO mission testing with successful results
by Clarence Oxford
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Nov 01, 2025

Aitech Systems has conducted radiation testing for the S-A2300 AI supercomputer to determine its suitability for low Earth orbit missions. On May 6, 2025, the S-A2300 underwent gamma irradiation using cobalt-60 at a specialized facility. The evaluation followed MIL-STD-883 guidelines, exposing the unit to dose rates of 2815 rad per minute at ambient temperature while powered and connected to test interfaces.

Engineers assessed total ionizing dose (TID) effects, monitoring performance under exposure increments up to 10 krad (Si). All system functions - including NVMe storage, eMMC boot, Ethernet communication, UART and GPIO, FPGA access, and CPU/GPU stress testing - passed operational checks during and after irradiation. Device temperature remained stable near 33 degrees Celsius throughout testing.

Simulations with 200 - 300 mils (5 - 7.5 mm) of aluminum shielding indicate the S-A2300 will withstand up to 20 krad (Si) in orbit, matching the requirements for typical LEO satellite missions. The supercomputer uses an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Industrial module featuring 248 trillion operations per second, 2048 CUDA cores, 64 Tensor cores, a 12-core ARM v8.2 CPU, and 64 GB LPDDR5 ECC RAM. Storage includes 1 TB NVMe SSD and microSD for telemetry, with cold plate cooling and a compact design for spacecraft integration.

The S-A2300 enables onboard AI processing for applications such as real-time image analysis, autonomous navigation, climate and environmental monitoring, space debris tracking, and defense satellite situational awareness. In-orbit AI allows satellites to perform immediate data evaluation and autonomous decision-making, reducing reliance on ground transmission and processing.

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