The Transit system, also known as NAVSAT or NNSS, was the first satellite navigation system to be used operationally. The radio navigation system was primarily used by the U.S. Navy to provide accurate location information to its Polaris ballistic missile submarines, and it was also used as a navigation system by the Navy's surface ships, as well as for hydrographic survey and geodetic surveying. Transit provided continuous navigation satellite service from 1964, initially for Polaris submarines and later for civilian use as well. In the Project DAMP Program, the missile tracking ship USAS American Mariner also used data from the satellite for precise ship's location information prior to positioning its tracking radars.
A CubeSat is a class of miniaturized satellite based around a form factor consisting of 10 cm (3.9 in) cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than 2 kg (4.4 lb) per unit, and often use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components for their electronics and structure, some non for profit organizations such as KSF Space Foundation offering cheapest on shelf cubesat kit as well. CubeSats are put into orbit by deployers on the International Space Station, or launched as secondary payloads on a launch vehicle. As of August 2021, more than 1,600 CubeSats have been launched.
DART, or Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology, was a NASA spacecraft with the goal to develop and demonstrate an automated navigation and rendezvous capability. At the time of the DART mission, only the Roscosmos and JAXA had autonomous spacecraft navigation. Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC) was the prime contractor for construction, launch and operation of the DART spacecraft with a project cost of US$110 million (2005). The contract was awarded in June 2001 and the spacecraft was launched on 15 April 2005. The mission ended prematurely, very shortly after an anomalous slow-velocity collision with its target spacecraft, having completed less than half of the original mission autonomous rendezvous objectives.
The design of spacecraft covers a broad area, including the design of both robotic spacecraft, and spacecraft for human spaceflight.
The International Cospas-Sarsat Programme is a satellite-aided search and rescue (SAR) initiative. It is organized as a treaty-based, nonprofit, intergovernmental, humanitarian cooperative of 45 nations and agencies. It is dedicated to detecting and locating emergency locator radio beacons activated by persons, aircraft or vessels in distress, and forwarding this alert information to authorities that can take action for rescue.
TacSat-2 is the first in a series of U.S. military experimental technology and communication satellites.TacSat-2 (also known as JWS-D1 was an experimental satellite built by the USAF's Air Force Research Laboratory with an operational life expected to be not more than one year as part of the "Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration" program.
The Space Test Program (STP) is the primary provider of spaceflight for the United States Department of Defense (DoD) space science and technology community. STP is managed by a group within the Advanced Systems and Development Directorate, a directorate of the Space and Missile Systems Center of the United States Space Force. STP provides spaceflight via the International Space Station (ISS), piggybacks, secondary payloads and dedicated launch services.
Astrionics is the science and technology of the development and application of electronic systems, subsystems, and components used in spacecraft. The electronic systems on-board a spacecraft are embedded systems and include attitude determination and control, communications, command and telemetry, and computer systems. Sensors refers to the electronic components on board a spacecraft.
The Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment (CanX) program is a Canadian CubeSat nanosatellite program operated by the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, Space Flight Laboratory (UTIAS/SFL). The program's objectives are to involve graduate students in the process of spaceflight development, and to provide low-cost access to space for scientific research and the testing of nanoscale devices. The CanX projects include CanX-1, CanX-2, the BRIght Target Explorer (BRITE), and CanX-4&5.
The Cornell University Satellite (CUSat) is a nanosatellite developed by Cornell University that launched on 29 September 2013. It used a new algorithm called Carrier-phase Differential GPS (CDGPS) to calibrate global positioning systems to an accuracy of 3 millimeters. This technology can allow multiple spacecraft to travel in close proximity.
SNAP-1 is a British nanosatellite in low Earth orbit. The satellite was built at the Surrey Space Centre by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) and members of the University of Surrey. It was launched on 28 June 2000 on board a Kosmos-3M rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. It shared the launch with a Russian Nadezhda search and relay spacecraft and the Chinese Tsinghua-1 microsatellite.
The University Nanosat Program is a satellite design and fabrication competition for universities. It is jointly administered by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the Space Development and Test Wing and the AFRL Space Vehicles Directorate's Spacecraft Technology division. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center was involved from the program inception through Nanosat-3.
DRAGONSat is a pair of nanosatellites that will be demonstrating autonomous rendezvous and docking (ARD) in low Earth orbit (LEO) for NASA. It will be gathering flight data with a global positioning system (GPS) receiver strictly designed for space applications to gather flight data in the space environment. ARD is the capability of two independent spacecraft to rendezvous in orbit and dock without crew intervention. One DRAGONSat was built by the University of Texas and the other one was built by Texas A and M University, the Space Shuttle Payload Launcher (SSPL), These satellite projects will rendezvous and dock with each other in space without the benefit of human intervention.
SSETI Express was the first spacecraft to be designed and built by European students and was launched by the European Space Agency. SSETI Express is a small spacecraft, similar in size and shape to a washing machine. On board the student-built spacecraft were three CubeSat picosatellites, extremely small satellites weighing around one kg each. These were deployed one hour and forty minutes after launch. Twenty-one university groups, working from locations spread across Europe and with very different cultural backgrounds, worked together via the internet to jointly create the satellite. The expected lifetime of the mission was planned to be 2 months. SSETI Express encountered an unusually fast mission development: less than 18 months from kick-off in January 2004 to flight-readiness.
Radio Aurora Explorer (RAX) is the first National Science Foundation sponsored CubeSat mission. The RAX mission is a joint effort between SRI International in Menlo Park, California and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The chief scientist at SRI International, Dr. Hasan Bahcivan, led his team at SRI to develop the payload while the chief engineer, Dr. James Cutler, led a team of students to develop the satellite bus in the Michigan Exploration Laboratory. There are currently two satellites in the RAX mission.
Jugnu, is an Indian technology demonstration and remote sensing CubeSat satellite which was operated by the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Built under the guidance of Dr. N. S. Vyas, it is a nanosatellite which will be used to provide data for agriculture and disaster monitoring. It is a 3-kilogram (6.6 lb) spacecraft, which measures 34 centimetres (13 in) in length by 10 centimetres (3.9 in) in height and width. Its development programme cost around 25 million rupee. It has a design life of one year.
Attitude control is the process of controlling the orientation of an aerospace vehicle with respect to an inertial frame of reference or another entity such as the celestial sphere, certain fields, and nearby objects, etc.
USA-221, also known as FalconSat-5, is an American military minisatellite, which was launched in 2010. The fifth FalconSat spacecraft to be launched, it carries four technology development and ionospheric research experiments. The satellite was constructed and is operated by the United States Air Force Academy.
RAX-2 is a CubeSat satellite built as a collaboration between SRI International and students at the University of Michigan College of Engineering. It is the second spacecraft in the RAX mission. The RAX-1 mission ended after approximately two months of operation due to a gradual degradation of the solar panels that ultimately resulted in a loss of power. RAX team members applied the lessons learned from RAX-1 to the design of a second flight unit, RAX-2, which performs the same mission concept of RAX-1 with improved bus performance and additional operational modes. Science measurements are enhanced through interactive experiments with high power ionospheric heaters where FAI will be generated on demand.
TSUBAME was a microsatellite developed by the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Tokyo University of Science from a student design concept in 2004. The satellite was designed to demonstrate new technologies for rapid attitude control, observing gamma ray bursts, and earth observation. The name, TSUBAME, means swift in Japanese and was chosen both because of the experimental attitude control system and to invoke another gamma ray observatory, the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission, which launched shortly after TSUBAME's first design concept was published in 2004.
