THIS PROPOSAL ADDRESSES NASA'S EARTH SCIENCE MISSIONS AND ITS UNDERLYING NEEDS FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE SCALABLE ON-BOARD PROCESSING. THE DECADAL SURVEY MISSIONS STRESSED HIGHER RESOLUTION INSTRUMENTS AND PERSISTENT MEASUREMENTS WHICH DROVE COMPUTING NEEDS UP BY 100-1 000X. OUR AIST-14 SPACECUBEX EFFORT DEVELOPED A FRAMEWORK WHICH SUPPORTED RAPID TRADE SPACE EXPLORATION OF ON- BOARD HETEROGENEOUS COMPUTING SOLUTIONS (MULTI-CORE CPUS COUPLED WITH DSP OR FPGA CO-PROCESSORS) ACROSS A BENCHMARK SUITE OF EARTH SCIENCE APPLICATIONS ACHIEVING 20-20 000X PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS. TODAY MEASUREMENT CAPABILITIES EMERGING FROM THE UPCOMING 2017 DECADAL SURVEY SUCH AS DISTRIBUTED SENSING DATA CONTINUITY MULTI-SATELLITE CONSTELLATIONS AND INTELLIGENT SENSOR CONTROL WILL REQUIRE AN ADDITIONAL 10-100X INCREASE IN ONBOARD COMPUTING PERFORMANCE. FOR THIS RENEWAL EFFORT WE PROPOSE TO EXTEND THE SPACECUBEX ON-BOARD COMPUTE ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK AND DEVELOP A HARDWARE PROTOTYPE TO SUPPORT THE EVALUATION OF THESE NEW MEASUREMENT CRITERIA. DISTRIBUTED SENSING MISSIONS REQUIRE APPLICATION PORTABILITY ACROSS PLATFORM TYPES HOWEVER PLATFORM CONSTRAINTS LEAD UAVS AND SATELLITES TO UTILIZE DIFFERENT PROCESSOR TYPES (GPUS VS FPGAS). A COMMON FRAMEWORK WHICH SUPPORTS BOTH FPGAS AND GPUS WILL FACILITATE MIGRATION BETWEEN THESE PLATFORM TYPES. MULTI-SATELLITE MISSIONS ENABLE DIURNAL AND MULTI-ANGLE MEASUREMENTS AND INVOKE COMPLEX COMMUNICATION AND CONTROL LOGIC WHICH MUST BE PROCESSED ON-BOARD. INTELLIGENT SENSOR CONTROL CAPABILITIES PRESENT COMPLEX AD HOC PROCESSING WHICH REQUIRES EXPERIMENTATION ON PROTOTYPE HARDWARE. THE SPACECUBEX PROJECT ADDRESSES THESE CHALLENGES BY EXTENDING THE EVOLVABLE TESTBED TO INCLUDE GPU SUPPORT MODEL DISTRIBUTED SENSORS AND HIGH BANDWIDTH COMMUNICATION LINKS DEVELOP PROTOTYPE HARDWARE AND DEMONSTRATE THE TECHNOLOGY. SPACECUBEX PROVIDES THE FOLLOWING BENEFITS: -ACCESSIBLE RAPID PROTOTYPING OF NEXT GENERATION SATELLITE AND MULTI-SATELLITE CONSTELLATIONS CAPABILITIES BY CREATING VIRTUAL SATELLITES IN THE CLOUD. -A PROTO-TYPE HETEROGENEOUS ON-BOARD COMPUTER FOR EXPERIMENTATION OF ADVANCED AUTONOMY AND CONTROL CAPABILITIES REQUIRED BY INTELLIGENT INSTRUMENT CONTROL AND CONSTELLATION MANAGEMENT. -ACCELERATE MIGRATION OF MISSIONS FROM UAV AND AIRBORNE PLATFORMS TO SATELLITES TO SUPPORT DISTRIBUTED SENSING.