The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently selected Aurora Flight Sciences to participate in its Phoenix program, the company said.
The goals of the Phoenix program are developing technologies to cooperatively harvest, and re-use, valuable components from retired and non-working satellites in geostationary orbit and to demonstrate the ability to create new spacecraft systems at greatly reduced cost, a statement said.
Aurora and its partners, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will develop prototypes of the attachment mechanisms to be used by satlets, or mini-satellites, to position themselves to accurately position and point the antenna once the satlets are attached. Aurora Phoenix Satlets CO-PI and Program Manager Jaime Ramirez-Riberos said recently 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 satlets are designed to point the antennas and relay the radio signals collected by the antenna to the ground.
Aurora’s team also intends to demonstrate a distributed control system to accurately position and point the antenna once the satlets are attached. The satlets are designed to point the antenna and relay the radio signals collected by the antenna to the ground, according to a company statement.
Ramirez-Riberos said Aurora’s satlet prototype and attachment mechanism are scheduled for delivery around June 2013 and the company’s distributed control algorithms demonstration is scheduled for the July-August 2013 time frame.
The reconfigured satellites are intended to provide additional communications bandwidth to Defense Department customers at a fraction of the cost of launching new satellites, according to a statement.
Aurora is responsible for the design, integration and testing of the satlet prototypes. MIT will provide control design expertise and microthruster technology to be used by the satlets to point the antennas. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is responsible for software development, verification and testing.