Production of high performance green propulsion offers high thrust for challenging SmallSat programs

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 7, 2022 (VACCO PR) — VACCO® Industries has initiated production of Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) Integrated Propulsion Systems (IPS) in their Advanced Products manufacturing facility near Los Angeles.

“These systems are unique in that they are specifically designed to meet DoD and NASA requirements” stated Joe Cardin, VACCO’s Chief Technology Officer.

IPS systems from VACCO’s pilot production program recently completed missions on three classified SmallSats. VACCO is now incorporating lessons-learned and moving their flight-proven IPS design into continuous production using a Flow Cell manufacturing model to supplement their traditional Job Shop model.

• Pale Blue Inc. (“Pale Blue”) will exhibit at the Small Satellite Conference 2022 (August 6 – 11 at Utah State University)
• Dr. Asakawa (CEO) will speak at the technical presentation, held on Wednesday, August 10th
• Pale Blue (booth number 49) will showcase water-based hybrid thruster for small satellites planned for the world-first space demonstration

LOGAN, Utah — Pale Blue will showcase a 100kg-satellite mockup equipped with the water resistojet for the first time. Furthermore, this exhibit will feature the world’s first Multiple Water Propulsion Systems, which is scheduled to be demonstrated in space for the first time by JAXA’s Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration-3 by March 2023, and the Water Resistojet for small satellites that features high thrust.

WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA has announced a new round of opportunities through the agency’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) for CubeSat developers, including educational institutions, to conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations in space and contribute to the agency’s exploration goals.

Hi everyone. In Utah all week for the first in-person Small Satellite Conference in two years. Lots of cool things going on in the whole smallsat industry. I’ll be reporting on the news and developments. Check here for updates and also follow www.twitter.com/spacecom.

Agreement expands availability of last-mile smallsat delivery via European missions

SEATTLE / Logan UT  (Spaceflight Inc. PR) – Spaceflight Inc., the leading global launch services provider, today announced it signed an agreement with SAB Launch Services S.r.l. (SAB LS) to fly its Sherpa® orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs) on Arianespace Vega missions. The agreement extends Spaceflight launch capacity on European missions managed by Arianespace for Spaceflight’s OTV-based services on launches starting as soon as next year. The companies are also partnering to offer customers access to shared integration and storage facilities across the U.S. and Europe.

Once deployed from the rocket, the chemical propulsion OTV will ignite and transport a customer payload from 310km circular orbit to a 1,000km orbit

SEATTLE/Logan, UT. (Spaceflight Inc. PR) – Spaceflight Inc., the leading global launch services provider, today announced it shipped the fully integrated Sherpa-LTC orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) and customer payload to Cape Canaveral to launch aboard an upcoming Starlink mission scheduled for next month. The high-thrust propulsive Sherpa will deploy from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 targeting a 310-kilometer circular orbit, before igniting and transporting an undisclosed customer payload, booked through Astro Digital, to a 1,000-kilometer circular orbit.

Sherpa-LTC features a bi-propellant, green propulsion subsystem utilizing Benchmark Space Systems’ new Polaris propulsion technology. The revolutionary OTV provides a low-cost, rapid orbital transfer for many sizes of small spacecraft. 

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

LOGAN, Utah — Small satellites could explore Mars and Venus cheaply and efficiently using inflatable structures that would enable them to more easily enter orbit around these planets, according to research presented at the Small Satellite Conference on Saturday.

Virgin Galactic is getting pounded by Wall Street analysts after announcing on Thursday that it was delaying the commercial start of its suborbital space tourism service from Q1 to Q2 2023. MarketBeat reports: Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE – Get Rating) was downgraded by Truist Financial from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report released on Friday, The Fly reports. They presently have a $5.00 price objective on the stock, down from their previous […]

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

India’s new Small Satellite Launch Vehicle failed to orbit two small satellites on Sunday after its fourth stage engine failed to fire as planned, stranding the two Earth observation satellites in an unstable elliptical orbit from which they later burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

PARIS (CNES PR) — CNES and the Institut de physique du globe de Paris (Université Paris Cité/IPGP/CNRS) have been selected to integrate a seismometer on NASA’s next lunar mission. As part of the CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program, NASA has just selected the Draper company to send the lander that will carry this instrument and land on the Moon in May 2025.

By Lauren Duda
Lockheed Martin Space

Following the successful launch of NASA’s Lucy spacecraft on Oct. 16, 2021, a group of engineers huddled around a long conference table in Titusville, Florida. Lucy was mere hours into its 12-year flight, but an unexpected challenge had surfaced for the first-ever Trojan asteroids mission.

Data indicated that one of Lucy’s solar arrays powering the spacecraft’s systems — designed to unfurl like a hand fan — hadn’t fully opened and latched, and the team was figuring out what to do next.

HOUSTON (NASA PR) — Space may look empty, but it contains extreme temperatures, high levels of background radiation, micrometeoroids, and the unfiltered glare of the Sun. In addition, materials and equipment on the outside of the International Space Station are exposed to atomic oxygen (AO) and other charged particles as it orbits the Earth at the very edge of our atmosphere. Only the hardiest materials, equipment, and organisms can withstand this harsh environment, and scientists conducting research on the orbiting laboratory have identified some of them for a variety of potential uses.