Millennium Space Systems<\/b> shared details of a previously unknown small satellite mission for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency<\/b> (DARPA) that tested crosslinks and on-orbit processing.<\/p>\n
Millennium Space Systems began the Red-Eye program \u2014 named for the bright red \u201cremove before flight\u201d cover used to keep the payload clean \u2014 in late 2015. The mission consisted of three small satellites launched from the International Space Station (ISS) in 2019 and 2020. <\/p>\n
The small satellites\u2019 purpose was to demonstrate new avionics, communications devices, on-board processors and crosslinks. Because the satellites were launched from the ISS, they could not be equipped with propulsion. The Millennium Space System team developed a form of aerodynamic drag modulation to control the constellation\u2019s orbital spacing.<\/p>\n
The drag modulation technology that came out of the mission that wasn\u2019t originally planned, program manager Doug Hulse said in a Wednesday media briefing. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn planning our crosslink operations we needed to have specific spacing of our satellites [to] demonstrate our crosslinks at various ranges. So our team developed a method to control the spacing of our constellation using just aerodynamic drag on our solar array,\u201d Hulse said. \u201cWith no propulsion at all, and just by modulating our drag profile \u2014 because these are in Low-Earth Orbit, there is some amount of aerodynamics \u2014 they were able to to drive them apart, pull them closer together, and control spacing to effectively demonstrate our crosslinks.\u201d <\/p>\n
Hulse said the mission worked with DARPA to qualify a viable radio frequency inter-satellite communications link at a low size, weight, and power (SWAP) and cost. The program demonstrated multi-path-communications on-orbit, creating a path to networked smallsat constellations.<\/p>\n
He added that the satellites were based on Millennium\u2019s Altair spacecraft, and were essential in developing the Altair architecture. Capabilities that were demonstrated in the Red-Eye mission are now being applied across other Millennium programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been taking that technology and applying it to kind of the rest of our program,\u201d Hulse said. \u201cRed-Eye is really a gem for all of our customers in the national security space. It provides the infrastructure, whether it\u2019s onboard processing, pushing the envelope of edge processing on orbit, inter-satellite crosslinks, mesh networking, the affordability and agility of a small satellite, that\u2019s optimal for all kinds of missions like missile warning, missile tracking, and ISR.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Red-Eye contract with DARPA concluded in December 2021 and the first satellite decommissioned in June 2022. Millennium said the satellites were designed for a nine-month on-orbit mission life, and the other small satellites are still operating without capability degradation. The company is exploring other potential Department of Defense (DoD) program opportunities for the technology. <\/p>\n
The mission proved what small satellites can do for national security purposes, said Millennium Space CEO Jason Kim. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s more and more proof points of what small satellites can do to provide capabilities for tactical missions, and do it in a very accelerated timeline at an affordable price point,\u201d Kim said. \u201cThe industry as a whole is doing things on orbit that are showing that small satellites have a lot of capability to provide low-latency, technical information to our customers for national security space.\u201d <\/p>\n
Correction: A previous version of the headline said the program was previously classified. It was previously undisclosed. The headline has been changed. <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Millennium Space Systems shared details of a previously unknown small satellite mission for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that tested crosslinks and on-orbit processing. Millennium Space Systems began the Red-Eye program \u2014 named for the bright red \u201cremove before flight\u201d cover used to keep the payload clean \u2014 in late 2015. The mission […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55016"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}