The upgraded Mira vehicle. Photo: Impulse Space

Impulse Space has made a number of technical improvements to its Mira vehicle, the company’s high-thrust, highly maneuverable spacecraft for payload hosting and deployment. The upgraded design aims to deliver higher performance for more challenging orbital regimes, including Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), Geostationary Orbit (GEO), and beyond. In addition to being optimized for higher energy orbits, the next-generation Mira vehicle provides increased delta-v, greater power for payloads, more payload capacity, and expanded autonomy. Impulse Space announced the upgrades, Aug. 6.

Impulse Space said the upgraded vehicle’s first flight, called LEO Express 3, is fully manifested and scheduled to fly later this year.

There are many new interesting developments in terms of upgrades. Cybersecurity is at the heart of one of the main upgrades. For example, the design upgrade for Mira integrates NSA Type 1 cryptographic solutions to protect mission data and command links; Mira also complies with CNSSP-12 requirements to ensure end-to-end security for classified information.

There have also been some interesting developments on the software side. Mira’s upgraded software stack pushes performance even further by supporting dynamic, software-defined mission reconfigurations directly on orbit. Mira’s software is designed to further increase its ‘hands-off’ operations, bringing even more autonomous functionality to tasks like executing payload ops, maintaining station, and downlinking data.

Thirdly, the upgraded vehicle aims to offer more flexibility for rideshare and payloads. Mira’s form factor has been redesigned to provide customers with maximum flexibility for their payloads and missions. The new single bay design is compatible off-the-shelf with Helios and optimized to maximize customer payload volume for rideshare missions.

“With its first two missions, Mira has already proven to be a strong step in the right direction, and we’re confident that this updated design will further accelerate opportunities across the commercial, civil, and defense sectors. As part of the design upgrade, Impulse will also increase the production rate for Mira vehicles. This will enable support for proliferated architectures and rapid replenishment requirements, among other use cases,” Tom Mueller, founder and CEO, Impulse Space, said in a statement.