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An artistic rendition of a HEMERIA constellation smallsat.
Image is courtesy of Kinéis.

NewSpace Systems (NSS), the manufacturer of “lean”, high-quality space components and sub-systems, has been down-selected by the Hemeria team to provide several of the ADCS products for the Kinéis constellation.

This constellation of smallsats will be dedicated to the Internet of Things (IoT).

The South African company design and manufacture a range of components and sub-systems from both its facilities in South Africa and the United Kingdom. Particularly strong in the area of Attitude Control Systems, NewSpace predominantly focuses on the smallsat market.

NSS CEO James Barrington-Brown said the company is excited to announce that with the successful completion of the EQSR last month, the NSS team is now working closely with the Hemeria team on the qualification phase for this program.

The NewSpace Systems’ Dark Room, which contains an artificial sun for the testing of their Fine Sun Sensors forms part of the NewSpace ISO-7 certified (Class 10,000) Clean Room.
Photo is courtesy of NewSpace Systems.

VOX Space, the Virgin Orbit subsidiary, has signed a new agreement with the Department of the Air Force, allowing the company’s LauncherOne system to conduct missions to space from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.

VOX Space President Mandy Vaughn and U.S. Air Force 36thWing Commander Brig. Gen. Gentry Boswell, signed the Commercial Space Operations Support Agreement (COSOSA) Annex in early April, setting the stage for the STP-27VP mission, VOX Space’s first launch from Andersen Air Force Base.

Virgin Orbit and VOX Space first expressed interest in launching from the Pacific island of Guam in mid-2019. Due to Guam’s low latitude and clear launch trajectories in almost all directions, the company’s uniquely mobile LauncherOne system can effectively serve all orbital inclinations, such as delivering up to 450 kg to a 500 km equatorial orbit. 

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Space Test Program (STP) procured the STP-27VP launch with VOX Space under the Rapid Agile Launch Initiative (RALI), leveraging the Defense Innovation Unit’s (DIU) Other Transaction Agreement. One of the first missions to fly on LauncherOne, the STP-27VP manifest consists of several CubeSats from various government agencies performing experiments and technology demonstrations for the DoD. 

As the system is not tied to a traditional ground-based launch site, LauncherOne will leverage key locations around the world including Guam to provide responsive and affordable flights to space for a broad variety of customers. Even now, VOX Space and Virgin Orbit are working closely with multiple allied governments and international organizations interested in establishing launch capabilities closer to home. 

After successfully demonstrating all major vehicle assemblies and completing an extensive flight test program, the Virgin Orbit team is in the midst of final preparations for an orbital launch demonstration expected soon. 

Ms. Vaughn said the company is grateful to Brig. Gen. Deanna Burt and her team at HQ USSF/S3, as well as Wing Commander Brig. Gen. Boswell, Vice Commander Col. Matthew Nicholson, and all of the excellent airmen and women of the 36thWing and Pacific Air Forces for their support,” said VOX Space President Mandy Vaughn.  “Lt. Gen. John Thompson and his team at the Space and Missile Systems Center have also provided visionary leadership throughout this process. We’re very excited to demonstrate the flexibility and mobility that only LauncherOne can offer.” 

Artistic rendition of the AERO and VISTA smallsats.

NanoAvionics has received a contract to build two nanosatellites for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) AERO-VISTA mission team at the recently opened NanoAvionics manufacturing facility in Columbia, Illinois, USA.

Funded by NASA’s H-TIDeS (Heliophysics Technology and Instrument Development for Science program), the mission is led by MIT and includes several partners: MIT Haystack Observatory, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Merrimack College, Dartmouth College, and Morehead State University. Morehead State is responsible for bus contracting and ground operations services.

The two identical spacecraft: AERO (Auroral Emissions Radio Observer) and VISTA (Vector Interferometry Space Technology with AERO) will be based on NanoAvionics’ standardized pre-integrated and pre-qualified 6U nanosatellite bus M6P. Both will house a novel electromagnetic vector sensor antenna developed by MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory.

The aim of this first in-space demonstration is to study from an LEO unexplained features about the nature and sources of radio emission from the Earth’s aurora. With a targeted launch in 2022, the AERO-VISTA mission is expected to last three months.

To accomplish the AERO-VISTA mission, the vector sensor onboard the two smallsats will measure amplitude and phase of radio emission in the Earth’s aurora zone – the geographic area above the Arctic Circle where the Northern Lights appear. Using a sun-synchronous polar orbit will allow sensing of radiation not visible from Earth.

In addition to their respective mission, coordinated observations by the pair will demonstrate interferometry, merging or superimposing waves to create an interference pattern from which information about the source can be extracted. Interference measures how two or more waves interact, akin to throwing stones into a calm pool. If successful and validated in flight, the expected result will produce higher-resolution data providing deeper insight into phenomena investigated by space-based radio telescopes.

According to Dr. Philip Erickson, principal investigator (PI) of AERO, the aim of the NASA-funded mission is to greatly improve knowledge of Earth’s aurora by studying its fascinating radio emissions from orbit. This is an ambitious task and takes a talented set of dedicated professionals to solve the many technical and science challenges of small satellite platforms. The resulting understanding of the near-Earth space environment benefits all who seek to learn about the natural world.

Dr. Frank Lind, VISTA PI, stated that, ultimately space science missions are about people exploring our world. It takes a great team of people to make that happen. NanoAvionics is now a key part of the team and all are looking forward to designing and building these satellites with them.

Dr. Benjamin K. Malphrus, professor of Space Science at Morehead State University and co-PI on the mission , added that the room for discovery in this area is wide open and there are many aspects of the aurora that are not well understood. The vector sensor antenna is unlike anything that has previously flown. It has the potential to produce significant science returns. He continued that after a long and competitive search process, the team selected NanoAvionics to provide the two satellite buses. NanoAvionics is an innovative company with a highly capable bus and was an excellent fit for this potentially significant science mission.

F. Brent Abbott, CEO of NanoAvionics US, stated that being part of this first-of-its-kind MIT research mission and working with such an august team is very exciting and the selection of NanoAvionics as the mission integrator shows the confidence in the company’s technology and strong performance of the firm’s nanosatellite buses.

NanoAvionics thermal vacuum testing of the company’s smallsats.

A new, independent study found that all 1,078 smallsats on commercial launches in the last five years experienced delays, with a median delay of 128 days.

What caused these delays? Bryce found that 40% of all smallsat delay days were attributed to delays in the primary payload and 34% were launch vehicle-related. Less than 1% of all smallsat delay days were caused by weather.

Learn more about mitigating smallsat launch delays in Bryce’s latest report, commissioned by Spaceflight, Inc., by downloading the company’s infographic at this direct link…

Bryce has also been selected as one of five companies to support NASA’s efforts to enable a LEO economy. Bryce will develop an integrated action plan to address barriers to the growth of the LEO economy, while other selected companies will seek to raise the technological readiness level of their products and move them to market.

Geospatial intelligence provider BlackSky is now offering remote access to the company’s global monitoring services and satellite imaging.

The company said its telework tools are cyber secure and allow analysts to develop intelligence reports and share unclassified information. Users of the BlackSky service draw intelligence from a combination of remote sensing satellite images, environmental sensors, asset tracking sensors, IoT systems, local foreign news, social media, industry publications and financial reports. The information is analyzed with machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques.

BlackSky’s telework package, called Spectra On-Demand Secure Bundle, was designed for intelligence analysts who handle unclassified but still sensitive information and can be accessed online from any computer.

BlackSky CEO, Brian O’Toole, noted that, given the coronavirus pandemic, intelligence analysts, financial analysts and researchers are seeking solutions that allow teams to continue critical security and intelligence projects while working remotely.

Scott Herman, BlackSky’s CTO, stated that a significant portion of our workforce works from home. We’ve been longtime adopters of a lot of these collaborative tools. Many of the company’s customers across U.S. national security and intelligence agencies are used to working in secure facilities. After the pandemic hit, suddenly they found themselves having to telework and realized they didn’t have remote access to data or tools needed to do their jobs, and they had security concerns, he said, adding that the company is providing access to the firm’s satellites for tasking as well as providing access to other satellites for tasking and archiving data plus a wide range of sensors used for global monitoring.The services also include training on the methodology involved in capturing data. Analysts still have to go to secure facilities to work with classified information but much of their unclassified work can be done from home.

BlackSky has four satellites in operation and plans to launch eight more satellites later this year.

Less than 15 months after contract award, Millennium Space Systems has designed, manufactured, assembled and integrated the U.S. Space Force TETRA-1 satellite. The work was completed 60 percent faster than previous missions, improving the U.S. Space Force’s ability to advance the TETRA-1 technologies more quickly.

TETRA-1 is a microsatellite created for various prototype missions in and around geosynchronous earth orbit. TETRA-1 was the first prototype award under the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center’s Space Enterprise Consortium Other Transaction Authority (OTA) charter.

Photo of the U.S. Space Force TETRA-1 satellite during the build process. Image is courtesy of Millennium Space Systems.

Most of the TETRA-1 components were completed by leveraging Millennium’s in-house capabilities, demonstrating that organically developed capabilities are a key enabler for executing programs on a tight schedule. After system integration, the satellite successfully completed its environmental and full functional tests.

TETRA-1 is based on Millennium’s proven ALTAIR-class smallsat product line. It is the first of Millennium’s ALTAIR satellites to qualify for operations in the geosynchronous orbit space environment, 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) from the Earth’s surface. TETRA-1 is manifested on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket currently scheduled for launch in late 2020.

Col. Tim Sejba, Director, Innovation and Prototyping, Development Corps, Space and Missile Systems Center, Detachment 1, at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, said that one of the primary goals is to be more agile in the development and deployment of innovative space assets. By leveraging OTA contracts with programs such as TETRA-1, the organization is expediting the execution of new space development missions. The partnership developed with Millennium Space Systems allows for the creation and fielding of a dynamic pathfinder capability to meet the future space warfighter’s needs.

Mark Cherry, VP and GM, Boeing Phantom Works, stated that the pace set on TETRA-1 from contract award through readiness to launch represents what Boeing does best for national security customers. The lean Millennium team was up to the task, building and delivering a fully tested and verified satellite in record time.

Millennium Space Systems is a Boeing [NYSE: BA] subsidiary, headquartered in El Segundo, California. Founded in November 2001, Millennium provides credible alternatives for relevant and affordable solutions to today’s space industry challenges. The company designs flight systems and develops AS 9100-certified mission and system solutions for the Intelligence Community, Department of Defense, NASA and civil space customers. With Millennium’s ALTAIR™ and AQUILA™ products, Boeing is now positioned to offer customers the full range of tailored space capabilities and missions today.

More Information about Millennium Space Systems: .

Rocket Lab has successfully completed a mid-air recovery test – a maneuver that involves snagging an Electron test stage from the sky with a helicopter.

This successful test is a major step forward in Rocket Lab’s plans to reuse the first stage of their Electron launch vehicle for multiple missions. The test occurred in early March, before ‘Safer at Home’ orders were issued and before New Zealand entered Alert Level 4 in response to the COVID-19 situation.

To watch this test, please access this direct link to the YouTube video…

An Electron rocket liftoff. Photo is courtesy of RocketLab.

The test was conducted by dropping an Electron first stage test article from a helicopter over open ocean in New Zealand. A parachute was then deployed from the stage, before a second helicopter closed in on the descending stage and captured it mid-air at around 5,000 ft, using a specially designed grappling hook to snag the parachute’s drogue line. After capturing the stage on the first attempt, the helicopter safely carried the suspended stage back to land.

The successful test is the latest in a series of milestones for Rocket Lab as the company works towards a reusable first stage. On the company’s two most recent missions, launched in December 2019 and January 2020, Rocket Lab successfully completed guided the re-entries of Electron’s first stage.

Both stages on those missions carried new hardware and systems to enable recovery testing, including guidance and navigation hardware, S-band telemetry and onboard flight computer systems, to gather data during the stage’s atmospheric re-entry. One stage was also equipped with a reaction control system that oriented the first stage 180-degrees for its descent, keeping it dynamically stable for the re-entry. The stage slowed from more than 7,000 km per hour to less than 900 km by the time it reached sea-level, maintaining the correct angle of attack for the full descent.

The next phase of recovery testing will see Rocket Lab attempt to recover a full Electron first stage after launch from the ocean downrange of Launch Complex 1 and have it shipped back to Rocket Lab’s Production Complex for refurbishment. The stage will not be captured mid-air by helicopter for this test, but will be equipped with a parachute to slow its descent before a soft landing in the ocean, where it will be collected by a ship. This mission is currently planned for late-2020.

Rocket Lab Founder and Chief Executive, Peter Beck, said the successful mid-air recovery test is a major step towards increasing launch frequency by eliminating the need to build a new first stage for every mission. He congratulated the recovery team at Rocket Lab on a flawless, mid-air recovery test. Electron has already unlocked access to space for small satellites, but every step closer to reusability is a step closer to even more frequent launch opportunities for the firm’s customers. Rocket Lab is looking forward to pushing the technology even further this year and to return a flown stage back to the factory.

Made In Space (MIS) is helping in the fight against COVID-19 by providing frontline healthcare workers with much-needed supplies and equipment.

MIS facilities in Jacksonville, Florida, and Moffett Field, California, are using their additive manufacturing resources to provide hundreds of 3D printed face shields to local-area hospitals to augment the shortage of critical personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies.

Made in Space face shield.

The design includes a 3D printed frame with an adjustable headband that allows a clear plastic face shield to be easily snapped onto the frame. More than 200 masks have been produced over the last five days and are being distributed to local-area hospitals in Jacksonville, Florida, and Mountain View, California.

The worldwide shortage of PPE such as face shields, medical masks, and gowns increases the risk of exposure for healthcare personnel who are ill-equipped to care for COVID-19 patients. Hospitals and frontline workers are frantically implementing crisis capacity strategies to manage the inadequate supply of PPE and medical equipment.

MIS is engaging its engineering, manufacturing and design expertise to assess additional solutions to help in the fight. MIS engineers worked with local-area doctors in Jacksonville to quickly develop a rapid response ventilator adapter to enable a single ventilator to safely support multiple patients in extreme situations.

MIS Chief Engineer Michael Snyder said that in times of crisis, it is important for everyone to come together and the firm has  obligation to support those on the front lines. The Made in Space team is using every available 3D printing resource the company has to produce face shields to support local healthcare personnel.

NASA has selected a new mission to study how the Sun generates and releases giant space weather storms – known as solar particle storms – into planetary space.

This information improve understanding of how our solar system works as well as, ultimately, helping to protect astronauts traveling to the Moon and Mars by providing better information on how the Sun’s radiation affects the space environment they must travel through.

A new NASA mission called SunRISE will study what drives solar particle storms – giant surges of solar particles that erupt off of the Sun – as depicted in this illustration. Understanding how such storms affect interplanetary space can help protect spacecraft and astronauts. Image is courtesy of NASA.

The new mission, called the Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE), is an array of six cubesats operating as one very large radio telescope. NASA has awarded $62.6 million to design, build and launch SunRISE by no earlier than July 1, 2023.

NASA chose SunRISE in August 2017 as one of two Mission of Opportunity proposals to conduct an 11-month mission concept study. In February 2019, the agency approved a continued formulation study of the mission for an additional year. SunRISE is led by Justin Kasper at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

The mission design relies on six solar-powered cubesats – each about the size of a toaster oven – to simultaneously observe radio images of low-frequency emission from solar activity and share them via NASA’s Deep Space Network. The constellation of cubesats would fly within 6 miles of each other, above Earth’s atmosphere, which otherwise blocks the radio signals SunRISE will observe.

Together, the six smallsats will create 3D maps to pinpoint where giant particle bursts originate on the Sun and how they evolve as they expand outward into space. This, in turn, will help determine what initiates and accelerates these giant jets of radiation. The six individual spacecraft will also work together to map, for the first time, the pattern of magnetic field lines reaching from the Sun out into interplanetary space.

NASA JPL artistic rendition of a SunRISE smallsat.

NASA’s Missions of Opportunity maximize science return by pairing new, relatively inexpensive missions with launches on spacecraft already approved and preparing to go into space. SunRISE proposed an approach for access to space as a hosted rideshare on a commercial satellite provided by Maxar of Westminster, Colorado, and built with a Payload Orbital Delivery System, or PODS. Once in orbit, the host spacecraft will deploy the six SunRISE spacecraft and then continue its prime mission.

Missions of Opportunity are part of the Explorers Program, which is the oldest, continuous, NASA program designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space using principal investigator-led space science investigations relevant to the Science Mission Directorate’s (SMD) astrophysics and heliophysics programs. The program is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for SMD, which conducts a wide variety of research and scientific exploration programs for Earth studies, space weather, the solar system and universe.

Nicky Fox, Director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, said the agency is so pleased to add a new mission to the fleet of spacecraft that help to gain better understand of the Sun, as well as how the star influences the space environment between planets. The more that is known about how the Sun erupts with space weather events, the more their effects on spacecraft and astronauts can be mitigated.

Startup OrbitFab is working to make orbital refueling a reality and the firm has secured a new contract from the National Science Foundation’s early stage, deep tech, R&D initiative America’s Seed Fund to further the company’s goals.

The contract is specifically for development of a solution that provides rendezvous and docking capabilities in space, managing the end-to-end process of connecting two spacecraft and transferring fuel from one to the other. OrbitFab unveiled its connector hardware for making this possible last October at Disrupt, which it now refers to as its Rapidly attachable Fluid Transfer Interface (RAFTI).

16U tanker and global array with RAFTI closed.
Artistic rendition is courtesy of OrbitFab.

The RAFTI is designed as a replacement for existing valves used in satellites for fueling and draining propellant from spacecraft, but would seek to establish a new standard that provides easy interoperability both with ground fueling, and with in-space refueling (or fuel transfer from one satellite to another, depending on what’s needed).

Already, OrbitFab has managed to fly twice to the International Space Station (ISS) — last year, the firm became the first ever private company to supply the orbital lab with water. OrbitFab is not resting on its laurels and this new contract will help it prepare a technology demonstration of the docking process it’s RAFTI facilitates in their own test facilities this summer.

Longer-term, this is just phase one of a multi-par funding agreement with the NSF. Phase one includes $250,000 to make that first demo, and then ultimately that will lead to an inaugural trial of a fuel sale operation in space, which OrbitFab CMO Jeremy Schiel said should happen within two years. He noted this will involve two satellites, the company’s tanker and a customer satellite in a low LEO docking, exchanging fuel, and decoupling, and then repeating this process as many times as is possible to demonstrate the company’s capabilities.

Article source: NZE News — read the rest of the story at this direct infolink…