MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. \u2013 The Aerospace Corp. is sharing DiskSat technology with industry partners as the first four pancake-shaped spacecraft undergo commissioning.<\/p>\n
Orbotic Systems, a Southern California startup focused on space debris remediation, and San Francisco-based edge computing startup Satlyt have signed the first DiskSat commercial licensing agreements.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an opportunity for commercial, international, government to work with us to license the design, so that they can take it on themselves and build their own DiskSats,\u201d Catherine Venturini, Aerospace DiskSat principal scientist, told SpaceNews. Organizations also can work with Aerospace \u201cto help advance DiskSat capabilities or technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
Orbotic plans to operate DiskSats in very low Earth orbit (VLEO) to gather space weather observations with its Wind Ion Neutral Density (WIND) sensor. \u201cAlso working closely with The Aerospace Corporation to manufacture and distribute,\u201d Orbotic CEO Erik Long posted<\/a> on LinkedIn. \u201cIf you need a DiskSat or a ride for your tech, let me know. We will offer DiskSat as a Service (DaaS).\u201d<\/p>\n In-Orbit Compute<\/p>\n Satlyt is working with Aerospace to \u201cexplore applications in autonomous operations, in-orbit data processing, and distributed spacecraft coordination, advancing small satellite capabilities for both government and commercial missions,\u201d Rama Afullo, Satlyt founder and CEO, said on LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis collaboration represents a step toward enabling true autonomy in space,\u201d Afullo said in a Feb. 2 blog<\/a>. \u201cDiskSat provides the kind of power and scalability that makes real-time computing in orbit possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Aerospace is likely to announce additional partnerships as the DiskSats, launched<\/a> in December on a Rocket Lab Electron for the U.S. Space Force Space Test Program<\/a>,\u00a0complete commissioning and begin operations.<\/p>\n With its initial DiskSat mission, the Space Test Program plans to characterize the performance of the bus, while demonstrating generation and management of 100 watts of peak power. Communications and environmental-sensing payloads aon the first DiskSats will be evaluated as well.<\/p>\n Dispensing DiskSats<\/p>\n After launch, four 2.5-centimeter-thick DiskSats with a one-meter diameter were ejected from a DiskSat dispenser into low-Earth orbit at an altitude of approximately 550 kilometers.<\/p>\n \u201cAny new dispenser system is always high risk, so we put a lot of effort into testing and the design,\u201d Darren Rowen, DiskSat chief engineer, told SpaceNews. \u201cWe\u2019re happy that the custom-built dispenser for the DiskSats worked exactly as planned.\u201d<\/p>\n Once the commissioning phase ends, one DiskSat will move into VLEO \u201cto show we can maintain low-altitude flight,\u201d Rowen said. \u201cWith the low cross-sectional area, we expect to get lower than possible with traditional vehicles.\u201d<\/p>\n During commissioning, DiskSat program officials have demonstrated they can point and maneuver the flat satellites. <\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. \u2013 The Aerospace Corp. is sharing DiskSat technology with industry partners as the first four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[190709,175689,215442,215443,79,215145,722,193,175690,149518],"class_list":["post-462056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-aerospace-corp","tag-disksat","tag-orbotic","tag-satlyt","tag-science","tag-smallsat-symposium","tag-sn","tag-space","tag-space-test-program","tag-vleo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}