Sidus Space, Inc., a Space-as-a-Service satellite company focused on commercial satellite design, manufacture, launch, and data collection, today announced that the NASA team successfully completed their Preliminary Design Review (PDR) milestone on May 6th, 2022, to support the ASTRA project, selected under NASA’s Project Polaris.
In support of NASA’s Autonomous Satellite Technology for Resilient Applications (ASTRA) project, NASA’s Autonomous Systems Lab (ASL) team joined with Sidus Space to integrate and demonstrate for the first time, Mars Campaign Development (MCD) Division (formerly Advanced Exploration Systems) derived autonomous operations in a spaceflight environment. The demonstration expects to provide the necessary flight heritage for an autonomous system development platform that could be used on future deep space missions. ASTRA plans to infuse multiple new technologies on a Sidus-built LizzieSat-1 satellite which is scheduled to be deployed from the International Space Station (ISS) using the SSIKLOPS deployer.
“With ASL’s completion of the PDR milestone, our team has increased confidence in the detailed interactions between the core flight systems of LizzieSat and the ASTRA payload,” said Jamie Adams, Sidus Space Chief Technology Officer. The Sidus Space and the NASA teams are now focused on the Critical Design Review (CDR) which is scheduled for late June 2022. “The incorporation of autonomy and learning algorithms, and the safe demonstration on space flight systems is a technical discriminator for long duration missions to optimize crew and mission operators’ efficiency and where communication latencies drive the need for real-time, on-board system assessment,” Adams said.
LizzieSat-1, currently manifested to launch late 2022, intends to validate the MCD-developed autonomy software (NPAS-NASA Platform for Autonomous Systems) through on-orbit testing. The testing expects to evaluate the autonomous operation of the satellite imaging functions, assess the performance and behavior of the spacecraft power systems, and support the development, integration, testing, and operations of critical technologies for current and future Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (formerly, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate) missions.
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