In honor of Moon Day (July 20), we spoke with Avi Shabtai, CEO of Ramon.Space about data centers in Space, landings on tiny asteroids, images from Mars, and the good news about Beresheet 2.
Try to imagine a computer developed by a team of experts, with the objective of operating in space. It launches successfully, but as it leaves the atmosphere, an air bubble is discovered in one of its components. On planet earth, this of course would not pose a problem. In space, however, that one tiny air bubble could destroy years of hard work and millions of dollars invested in the project: it will try to find a way out, but with the absence of any external air for it to merge into, the bubble will explode powerfully inside the computer, just like microwave popcorn – and in so doing, will destroy everything around it.
It is precisely challenging problems like this in the field of space computing that Israeli company Ramon.Space – founded with the assistance of the Israel Space Agency in 2004 – is interested in solving. The company (named of course in honor of the first Israeli astronaut, the late Ilan Ramon) builds computer systems adapted to the extreme conditions of space, hoping to revolutionize the use of software applications and information processing. The company’s clients include state space agencies from around the world, as well as private companies.
“Our objective is to bring computing to space and provide services to earth, so that what is being here on the ground today can be done in space,” explains Avi Shabtai, CEO of Ramon.Space in a video confererence with IsraelDefense from Palo Alto, California, where the company’s headquarters are located. “Most of what we build is installed on satellites and deep-space missions that study the solar system, earth’s surroundings, and more.
“We’re developing extremely advanced, artificial intelligence and signal processing-based components as well as the entire computer systems around them in a way that they can handle the conditions: the radiation that destroys electronic components and that needs to be protected against with special systems, the vacuum – for example, how to cool a computer if there is no air to enable the use of a fan. We are literally developing solutions that are out of this world. As of today, we have already participated in over 50 space missions.”