The satellite sector is poised to see a period of rapid innovation and growth, spurred by the new U.S. National Space Policy, a broadband-hungry military and planned launches of more powerful and nimble satellites in the coming decade.

Ever-smaller satellites, software-defined radios, next-generation electronics and higher performing propulsion systems underscore a few of the new space capabilities that are attracting R&D investment 
 

 

The fertile environment for research and development is most apparent at NASA, where more than 70 percent of the agency’s new space technology budget will be awarded competitively. In fact, the program follows a DARPA model — operating in a very, open, competitive manner, says Bobby Braun, NASA’s new chief technologist. “We’re incentivizing people to think more about risk. In the past, NASA has been about beating out all the risk in every activity we do. Well, in technology development you have to take some risk. We have to incentivize people to reach a little farther out and have a little grander vision.”

 

 NASA recently released 14 space technology roadmaps for public comment covering critical areas such as in-space propulsion, shielding and nanotechnology. These future technology investments will enable NASA to meet its strategic plan in the next two decades for science and discovery and are pivotal to the agency’s plans to embark on deep space exploration missions to Mars and beyond. According to Braun, the agency’s biggest challenge is not budgetary but cultural. Braun worked at NASA as an aerospace systems engineer from 1987 to 2003 and recently returned to lead NASA’s technology office after working in academia. He says that NASA over the past decade was focused on near-term missions and not on future investments. “We are to a large extent living off the technology investments made in the 70s and even the 80s,” he says. Braun hopes to change that by getting NASA directorates to think more long-term and take more calculated risks. “Changing these mindsets is difficult. It takes senior agency leadership and it takes engineers and scientists all through NASA and throughout the country to think a little bit differently.“ Braun says that means not always choosing the lowest-risk, proven technology for a given mission but instead weighing the long-term benefits of trying a new technology that offers a performance benefit and the integrated risk across NASA’s future mission portfolio. A key innovation driver in NASA remains small business, which work with the agency through the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. NASA in December announced $50 million in phase one awards that will help NASA develop new capabilities and fill technology gaps in its current mission work. The programs previously operated independently and now are under the office of the chief technologist. 
 

 

A number of NASA awards will focus on more efficient test equipment that could fly on the International Space Station (ISS). “The administration and NASA are very serious about full utilization of the ISS as a national laboratory,” Braun says. “We want to use it for understanding how humans adapt to the long-term microgravity environment. We want to use it for materials research, potentially for biomedical applications. There are a number of techniques and test procedures being developed in small business today for use on the station that could enable us to use that unique environment in ways that deliver interesting products for the biomedical and other industries.”

 

In terms of ISS usage, “we’re looking at a portfolio of utilization across industry, academic, education and other government agencies to maximize the return on the investment in ISS,” says Jason Crusan, chief technologist for space operations at NASA headquarters in Washington. “We’re in a unique timeframe right now where we are truly opening the doors to ISS for outside utilization by industry, academia and other governmental organizations.” In January, NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (Scan) program will fly an orbiting laboratory, dubbed Connect (Communication Navigation and Networking Reconfigurable Testbed), on the ISS to perform space communications and navigation R&D in an actual space environment. Connect will have three software defined radios for experimental communications with the Earth. NASA will be able to reprogram these radios in flight — a capability that will be the basis for future communication and navigation systems. 

 

One planned test will involve Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) communications protocols, which are critical to enabling Internet connectivity throughout the solar system on future space exploration missions. “While we can make the terrestrial Internet protocols work in some space configurations, the majority of space missions must deal with long delays, weak signals, sometimes unidirectional links and frequent disruptions in the data path, especially as spacecraft go out of view behind a planet,” says John Rush, director of systems planning in Scan. “The DTN protocols were designed to provide Internet-like user data transfer in a variety of space mission scenarios, some of them involving data relay spacecraft around other bodies in space.”

 

NASA’s commitment to full ISS utilization also is reflected in a joint NASA-DARPA solicitation for research proposals to enhance small satellite experiments on the ISS. Many commercial and academic partners do not understand that the ISS is much more than a platform for NASA to do research on; it’s a “national lab asset that anybody can do research on,” says Crusan. As part of the authorization bill, NASA will cover the cost of the up mass that is required. As long as users meet one of the agency’s standard interfaces, the cost of launch and integration is borne by NASA. Crusan encourages firms investing in next-generation technologies to test them first on the ISS. Doing so is cost-effective and reduces risk. “The commercial industry can actually take more risk on the hardware that they fly. They don’t have to worry about 99.99 percent reliability on an object. They can take calculated steps in their technology development and fly more frequently or potentially iterate on their hardware on the space station,” he says. 
 

 

---