Altius Space Machines, Novawurks Awarded DARPA Pheonix Contracts

Altius Space Machines and NovaWurks said they’ve been awarded Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contracts as part of the agency’s Phoenix satellite reharvesting program.

Altius will provide engineering services to develop and integrate a storable tubular arm (STEM) for use as a platform for situational awareness cameras and lights and as a tool to reduce unwanted vibrations on parts of the target spacecraft caused during the component removal and purposing operations, according to a company statement. The STEM arm uses a composite material that forms a tubular shape as it unrolls from a stored coil. This allows a long arm to be deployed and retracted into a compact package.

The STEM tube and deployer hardware will be developed by Roccor LLC of Louisville, Colo. A camera/sensor suite to be mounted on the end of the STEM arm will be developed by Ecliptic Enterprises. The University of Colorado will explore contact compliance control calculations and robotic control software necessary to damp out unwanted oscillations in the target spacecraft.

NovaWorks’ contract, worth $2.8 million, is to provide Phoenix with a hyper-integrated space satlet design that supports space re-purposing operations and a common-use satlet hardware and software design that supports multiple functional areas, according to a company statement.

Satlets are a type of mini-satellite that are not necessarily capable of providing the functionality of a regular satellite by itself, but in an aggregated fashion, can provide the required functionality. The goal of the Phoenix program is developing and demonstrating technologies to cooperatively harvest and reuse valuable components from retired, non-working satellites in geostationary earth orbit (GEO).