AEROSPACE PRODUCTS
ZIN offers a broad set of mature, proven and affordable products, services and capabilities for new and existing customers in the government, civil and commercial markets. Our customers require systems and equipment to be safe, functional, and of the highest quality. ZIN’s experience with advanced technology systems and our wide-ranging program support capabilities work together to make us a leading small business partner to aerospace and defense clients around the nation.
Avionics Systems
ZIN provides space-rated, mission-critical electronics and avionics systems to IPC Class 3A and Space Addendum requirements. ZIN provides PCB Coupons & Micro-sections Analyzed with In-House Certified Component Engineers. ZIN has facility wide ESD controlled and certified facilities with staff trained to NASA-STD-8739 and IPC J-STD-001FS. Production at ZIN is through our QMS controlled work order system.
Sensor Systems - Guidance and Control
ZIN developed the Acceleration Measurement System (AMS) to provide inertial navigation formation flying for NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, currently operating on-orbit consisting of four satellites flying in precise formation. ZIN’s AMS is the first inertial navigation device accurate enough to enable this type of multi-sat formation flight to within a half second closure velocity times. It uses three high-performance accelerometers to measure tri-axial acceleration data, in a spin stabilized spacecraft and employs on-board data processing to apply acceleration filtering, calibration, alignment, and temperature compensation.
Power Systems - Power Distribution
ZIN Power Distribution Units (PDUs) are space-grade, radiation-hardened designs built to power critical missions. As an example, on NASA’s Commercial Resupply 2 program, ZIN provides all power system elements for the Dream Chaser vehicle. ZIN has developed PDUs that power both high-voltage systems (flight actuators, thrust vector controllers, satellite power busses) as well as low-voltage systems (avionics, flight computers, and communications). The PDUs control power flow from multiple sources, with features such as on/off switching, source prioritization, active MOSFET OR-ing, and load sharing. Our PDU designs can operate on voltage busses from 28-270V, and currents up to 500A.
Power Systems - Power Converters
ZIN is a proven designer of DC-DC and DC-AC power converter solutions for a wide range of space applications. Our DC-DC converter designs handle multiple kilowatts of power with up to 95% efficiency, and employ state-of-the-art technology such as soft switching and synchronous rectification. ZIN also designs DC-AC converters for space-based motor drives and power inverters. Our power converter designs are modular, and offer features such as on/off control, adjustable voltage, current limits, and extensive voltage, current, and temperature telemetry.
Power Systems - Battery Management
ZIN develops innovative spacecraft battery management solutions that monitor Li-Ion Cells during charging and discharging. ZIN’s highly flexible battery management system (BMS) design measures the voltage of a Li-Ion cell within +/-50mV, even in series stacks with hundreds of volts of common mode voltage. Our BMS is entirely housed within (and powered by) the battery pack, eliminating additional power I/O to the spacecraft bus. Our modular system is extendable to handle an arbitrary number of series cells, and performs equally well in low-voltage and high-voltage batteries. ZIN provides a hardware shutdown mode to completely disconnect the battery from the cells when the system is inactive.
Noise Attenuators - Low Frequency
ZIN has developed a lightweight tube resonator-based technology providing broadband low frequency noise attenuation below 150 Hz, called eCALF (Chamber Attenuator for Low Frequencies - CALF). Our eCALF testing for both absorption and transmission loss has shown large attenuation levels > 10 dB, in a low weight design. eCALF resonators were originally developed for aerospace applications, such as launch vehicles, but can also be tuned for aeronautical applications, for efficient broad band low to high-frequency noise attenuation.
Single Board Computer - Space Rated
ZIN is a provider of flight-proven single-board computers (SBC) for Class A/B missions. Our solution offers flight-qualified architectures with a wide range of digital I/O, as well as programmable digital logic options. Our design supports a variety of spacecraft telemetry, command, control, subsystem housekeeping and maintenance, as well as payload interface functions. The ZIN SBC can provide for MIL-STD-1553, RS-422, or Ethernet communications, is radiation-hardened to 100KRad, and is fully qualified to meet flight requirements for EMC, Shock, Vibration, Thermal Vacuum, Outgassing, Radiation, and EEE parts control. The design accommodates a range of Actel RTAX FPGAs providing extensibility.
Complex Digital Logic and FPGA Development
ZIN has digital logic design experience including work in FPGA implementation and ASIC development. ZIN has provided logic design, simulation, and implementation of FPGA designs, in VHSIC (Very High Speed Integrated Circuits) Hardware Description Language (VHDL) and Verilog, including fault tolerant designs with Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filters and interface controllers that used Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) with error correction for non-hardened static random-access memory (SRAM) blocks. ZIN utilizes the methodology of NASA-HDBK-4008 and has has experience implementing Fault-Tolerant and radiation hardened FPGAs including the RTAX-S.