Dec 7 2015
From The Space Library
NASA Small Satellites to Demonstrate Swarm Communications and Autonomy
NASA’s two Nodes small satellites hitched a ride to the International Space Station on the fourth Orbital ATK cargo mission, which launched on Dec. 6. Once aboard the station, the satellites will settle in for a two-to-three month stay until deployed into low-Earth orbit in early 2016.
The Nodes mission, which consists of two CubeSats weighing just 4.5 pounds each and measuring 4 inches by 4 inches by 6.5 inches, will test new network capabilities for operating swarms of spacecraft in the future.
“The purpose of the Nodes demonstration is to test out the potential for using multiple, small, low-cost satellites to perform complex science missions,” said Andrew Petro, program executive for the Small Spacecraft Technology Program (SSTP) in the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
A first for small satellites, Nodes will demonstrate the ability to receive and distribute commands in space from the ground in addition to periodically exchanging scientific data from their onboard radiation instruments. The satellites will be able to configure their data network autonomously by determining which spacecraft is best suited to communicate with the ground each day of the mission.
“The technologies demonstrated during this mission are important, as they will show that a network of satellites can be controlled without communicating to each satellite directly,” said Roger Hunter, program manager for SSTP at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California. “Nodes will demonstrate inter-satellite communications and autonomous command and control; this will help enable future constellation command and control capabilities.”
Upon deployment from the station, the Energetic Particle Integrating Space Environment Monitor (EPISEM) radiation sensor aboard each Nodes satellite will collect data on the charged particle environment at an altitude of about 250 miles above Earth. The EPISEM instruments were provided under contract by Montana State University. The Nodes satellites will demonstrate their networking capabilities through communication of this data with each other and the ground. In another SSTP-university partnership, Santa Clara University will conduct ground operations.
The mission is scheduled to last for two weeks, though the CubeSats will remain in orbit for several more months before their orbit decays, they re-enter and burn up in the atmosphere.
Nodes continues the legacy of the Phonesat series of small satellites by using commercially developed Android smartphone technology augmented with additional custom software that enables the satellites to perform spacecraft functions.
The launch of the Nodes small satellites follows last month’s launch of the eight small satellites of the Edison Demonstration of Smallsat Networks (EDSN) mission, which was lost in the failure of the U.S. Air Force-led Operationally Responsive Space Office's ORS-4 mission. However, the Nodes spacecraft were developed at Ames by the same team that developed the EDSN spacecraft and many of the same capabilities planned for EDSN will be demonstrated in the Nodes mission, with additional software enhancements.
“The Nodes mission concept was an opportunity to leverage the excellent work done on EDSN, and extend the systems at a low-cost and effort,” stated David Korsmeyer, director of engineering at Ames. “This is the value of the nanosat model of mission -- quickly adapt to new opportunities and leverage systems for incremental missions.”
Networked swarms of small satellites will open new horizons in astronomy, Earth observation and solar physics. Their range of applications includes multi-satellite science missions, the formation of synthetic aperture radars for Earth sensing systems, as well as large aperture observatories for next-generation telescopes. They can also serve to collect science measurements distributed over space and time to study the Earth, the Earth’s magnetosphere, gravity field, and Earth-Sun interactions.
The Nodes project is sponsored by the SSTP, a program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, and received additional funding from the Ames Research Center.
Release M15-152 Media Invited to See Progress Toward Space Station Launches from Virginia
NASA, Orbital ATK and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) will conduct a tour at 10:30 a.m. EST, on Thursday, Dec. 17, for media to view the completed work and preparations to resume next year commercial cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station from the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia.
Wallops Director Bill Wrobel will talk with media at Pad-0A about progress made and next steps. Dale Nash, executive director of the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, which owns and operates MARS, will provide a tour of the pad, and Mike Pinkston, Orbital ATK general manager and vice president of the Antares program, will lead a tour of the company’s Horizontal Integration Facility.
Media who would like to attend this event must contact Keith Koehler at keith.a.koehler@nasa.gov by 5 p.m. Dec. 14. For this event, only media who are U.S. citizens may attend.
A commercial resupply capability is vital to continued research and habitation aboard the International Space Station. The space station has enabled NASA to demonstrate new technologies and make research breakthroughs not possible on Earth over its 15 years of continuous human presence. Restoring a medium-class launch capability from Wallops is critical to furthering NASA’s and the nation’s goals in space, maintaining the space station as a springboard to the agency’s next giant leap in exploration -- including future missions to an asteroid and Mars.
Orbital ATK’s Antares program remains on schedule to commence flight operations from Wallops in the first half of 2016. The Antares is undergoing integration, with two new RD-181 engines fully installed into the first stage of the rocket. The program is working toward a full-power engine test on the launch pad early next year.
MARS has completed major repair work at Pad-0A, including modification of the commodity and purge lines to support the new engines, following the Antares launch mishap in October 2014. The team stands ready to support resumption of the cargo resupply launches with the upgraded Antares launch vehicle.
Release M15-170 NASA Television Coverage Set for Next Space Station Crew Launch
The next three crew members bound for the International Space Station are set to launch on Tuesday, Dec. 15. NASA Television will provide full coverage of the launch beginning at 5 a.m. EST.
Astronauts Tim Kopra of NASA and Tim Peake of ESA (European Space Agency), and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 6:03 a.m. (5:03 p.m. Baikonur time) for a six-month stay on the orbital complex.
The three will travel in a Soyuz spacecraft, rendezvous with the space station and dock to the Rassvet module at 12:24 p.m. NASA TV coverage of docking will begin at 11:45 a.m.
The hatches between the Soyuz and space station will be opened at about 2:25 p.m., and the newly arrived crew members will be greeted by Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly of NASA and Flight Engineers Sergey Volkov and Mikhail Kornienko of Roscosmos. NASA TV coverage of the hatch opening will begin at 2 p.m.
Kelly and Kornienko will return in March 2016 with Volkov after spending a year on the station collecting valuable biomedical data that will improve our understanding of the effects of long duration space travel and aid in NASA’s journey to Mars.
Together, the Expedition 46 crew members will continue the several hundred experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science currently underway and scheduled to take place aboard humanity’s only orbiting laboratory.
