Two National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) research and development CubeSats were successfully launched via rideshare aboard an Antares rocket as part of the Northrop Grumman-12 (NG-12) Cygnus cargo resupply mission from NASA Wallops Space Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Virginia, Nov. 2, 2019.
Led by NRO’s Advanced Systems and
Technology (AS&T) directorate, the two CubeSats are part of the NRO’s
IMPACT project – a research and development effort to provide early evaluation
of new technologies in space.
Manifested as AeroCube 14, the two 3U IMPACT CubeSats launched Saturday use the Aerospace Corporation’s AeroCube for unique bus and integration support and host 14 technology demonstrations ranging from new materials, such as structural materials and thermal straps, to solar cells, star tracker experiments and on-board processors.
The CubeSats will first travel to the
International Space Station (ISS) as part of the cargo resupply and will deploy
in about two months from the ISS to their final orbit.
“With IMPACT, our goal is to take the
pioneering research areas we’re exploring and test their survivability and
performance in space,” said Dr. Susan Durham, Director, AS&T.
To assist with the NRO’s research and
development goal of rapid technology infusion, the IMPACT program offers a
regular launch cadence for technology demonstrations; provides an adaptable bus
that enables easy onboarding and off-boarding of those technologies, and serves
as the front end of the technology for NRO future capabilities.
Four of the experiments launched today
are also part of NRO’s new Greenlighting program, which leverages and evaluates
the performance and space survivability of new technologies developed by
non-traditional commercial partners in a streamlined fashion on a rapid
timeline.
The unclassified Greenlighting program
focuses on technology development, not satellite development, by giving vendors
supporting NRO’s mission goals the ability to focus on maturation of
technologies without having to worry about the logistics of getting to space.
By using a standard circuit board
interface on which to host small module technology experiments, the
Greenlighting program drives miniaturization of technologies and keeps costs
low — all while giving these projects access to space testing that might not be
available through traditional means.
“The launch of our IMPACT CubeSats along with our new Greenlighting program represents the best of NRO’s collaboration with our commercial research and launch partners, and we’re excited to see how these efforts will help the NRO push the boundaries of our future capabilities,” Durham said.
Source: NRO
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