What is "spacewire"

SpaceWire is a spacecraft communication network based in part on the IEEE 1355 standard of communications. It is coordinated by the European Space Agency (ESA) in collaboration with international space agencies including NASA, JAXA and RKA.

Within a SpaceWire network the nodes are connected through low-cost, low- latency, full-duplex, point-to-point serial links and packet switching wormhole routing routers. SpaceWire covers two (physical and data-link) of the seven layers of the OSI model for communications.