Startup’s radiation shield tech could bring high-performance AI chips to space

WASHINGTON — A startup named Cosmic Shielding says it has found a way to close the technology gap that limits how much computing power satellites can carry into orbit.

The Atlanta-based company developed a lightweight nanocomposite, branded Plasteel, that it uses to build enclosures protecting advanced commercial processors from the intense radiation that bombards spacecraft. Radiation is one of the main reasons satellites still rely on radiation-hardened chips that are often five to 10 generations behind the latest commercial designs — a mismatch that has slowed efforts to bring artificial intelligence and other advanced computing to orbit.

Cosmic Shielding demonstrated Plasteel last year in partnership with Aethero, a small-satellite systems maker. An Nvidia Jetson Orin NX GPU, wrapped in Plasteel shielding, flew aboard an Aethero cubesat to test how an off-the-shelf chip would perform in orbit. “The mission demonstrated the Nvidia GPU can operate safely and error free for long durations in orbit,” the company’s co-founder Yanni Barghouty told SpaceNews.

That demonstration has helped the company attract new commercial and government customers, he said. Both the private sector and the U.S. military are increasingly interested in running AI and machine-learning algorithms in space to process data closer to the source instead of relaying everything back to Earth.

Cosmic Shielding is now working with the Air Force Research Laboratory to show the technology can protect military systems as well. 

Radiation shielding has long been a bottleneck in spacecraft design, since heavy materials add launch costs and limit payload flexibility, while rad-hard chips sacrifice performance. Investors and satellite operators, Barghouty said, are watching closely for technologies that can break this trade-off as constellations in low Earth orbit proliferate.

Air Force 18-month contract

In June, the Air Force’s technology outreach office AFWERX awarded Cosmic Shielding a TACFI contract (Tactical Funding Increase), which provides funding to small businesses with Phase 2 SBIR contracts to help them bridge the “valley of death” from prototype to deployment. TACFI contracts typically provide between $375,000 and $2 million, matched by private investors.

Cosmic Shielding received the program’s largest award: $2 million from AFRL, plus another $2 million in matching funds from existing customers. Under the 18-month deal, the company will build a modeling tool for AFRL that predicts how electronics will perform in space once shielded.

The process starts with testing commercial chips — like Nvidia Jetson and Xilinx processors — under different types of radiation. Those results are compared against aluminum and hybrid shielding approaches. Data from the tests and simulations are then combined into a “shielding forecast” model that engineers can use to design missions and select hardware without years of expensive trial-and-error.

Barghouty said Plasteel also has potential for human spaceflight, shielding both electronics and astronauts from cosmic rays, solar energetic particles and trapped radiation belts. After lab testing at particle accelerators, Cosmic Shielding partnered with Axiom Space to test the material during the Ax-2 mission to the International Space Station in 2023.

The TACFI contract, Barghouty said, will fund testing of more powerful processors for operations in orbit, including high-end GPUs needed for AI. “This is taking that next step and expanding it from just those Nvidia systems,” he said. “Now we’re saying, ‘how do we take every single legacy component that we’re used to working with in the defense industry, and how do we make those work in space?’”

Founded in 2020, Cosmic Shielding is currently based in Atlanta but plans to relocate to Huntsville, Alabama. “We’re getting a lot of support from the state there as well to move the infrastructure there. So that’s going to be the new headquarters,” Barghouty said.

The startup has also drawn high-profile advisors: former Pentagon officials Lisa Porter and Michael Griffin, also a former NASA administrator, have joined its board. Barghouty said the company is working with DARPA, the European Space Agency and Japan’s JAXA as interest in radiation shielding grows across the space sector.

“We now have about seven active systems in space. We have about 10 scheduled for the next 12 months,” Barghouty said. “So there’s a kind of inflection point we’ve seen occur over the past year.”