LOGAN, Utah – After a collection of spaceflight demonstrations adopted by years of secrecy, NovaWurks is able to talk about contracts, clients and expansion plans.
NovaWurks made a splash almost a decade in the past when the Southern California startup proposed establishing spacecraft with equivalent box-shaped modules weighing about six kilograms. The modules, now trademarked as Slegos (brief for Space Legos), present the features of standard elements like pointing, data processing and knowledge storage.
Designed to function in geostationary orbit for 15 years, Slegos provide “tons of capability,” Talbot Jaeger, NovaWurks founder and chief technologists, informed SpaceInformation on the Small Satellite Conference.
Rather than custom-designing spacecraft to accommodate payloads, NovaWurks arranges Slego constructing blocks in several configurations.
“We’re not designing, we’re configuring,” Jaeger mentioned. “Configuration doesn’t spend money on all that nonrecurring engineering.”
NovaWurks carried out its first in-orbit demonstration in 2017 on the International Space Station. An astronauts assembled a small satellite tv for pc by combining six modules, then known as HISats, with deployable photo voltaic arrays and an electro-optical imager within the NASA-sponsored Satlet Initial Proofs and Lessons mission.
In 2018, NovaWurks’ Payload Orbital Delivery Satellite, PODSat-1, a mission funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, reached geostationary switch orbit. PODSat-1’s 4 Slegos with a radio and antenna traveled to geostationary switch orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as a hosted payload that was later deployed from a Hispasat communications satellite tv for pc.
Novawurks once more demonstrated its modular method by the 2018 eXperiment for Cellular Integration Technology, or eXCITe, mission. Another Falcon 9 despatched eXCITe, considered one of 64 payloads on the rideshare flight, to low Earth orbit.
Taken collectively, the demonstrations offered NovaWurks with data engineers wanted to refine their method. For greater than two years, firm executives revealed little concerning the firm’s spaceflight demonstrations or future plans. At the time, NovaWurks engineers have been busy upgrading Slegos.
“With all that testing, fixing, correcting, adjusting, we have a product now that is ready and we’ve got people interested,” Jaeger mentioned. “It was hard to turn science fiction into fact. It took a lot of money and time, but it was worth it because we can change space.”
Early in-orbit demonstrations have led to contracts. To sustain, NovaWurks plans to greater than double its workers by the top of the yr from 20 to 50 individuals.
For instance, NovaWurks is working with Saturn Satellite Networks to collectively develop Saturn’s NationSat, a small geostationary communications satellite tv for pc.
NovaWurks is also working with NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency and the U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command on a mission to measure photo voltaic vitality mirrored and absorbed by Earth. Data might be gathered with a small telescope connected to NovaWurks Slegos. The challenge, known as Athena, is a take a look at of NovaWurks’ quick-turnaround functionality.
During the pandemic, NovaWurks offered the Space Force with one other demonstration of its quick-turnaround technique. The Space Force gave NovaWurks with three totally different spacecraft payloads with totally different thermal and field-of-view necessities. The thought was that when the Space Force chosen one of many three payloads to fly, NovaWurks would have solely 60 days to configure the spacecraft.
“When we said that was easy, they said made 30 days a stretch goal,” mentioned Bill Crandall, NovaWurks enterprise growth vice chairman.
The Space Force then chosen one of many three payloads. It took NovaWurks 5 days to configure and activate the spacecraft to accommodate it. The response from the Space Force was, “Okay, take that one apart and build another one,” Crandall mentioned.
Again, it took lower than 5 days. NovaWurks captured the method on video to share with the Space Force “because they didn’t believe it,” Jaeger mentioned.