{"id":62755,"date":"2019-03-22T01:09:42","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T17:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/lockheed-martin-accelerates-transition-to-software-defined-space\/"},"modified":"2019-03-22T01:09:42","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T17:09:42","slug":"lockheed-martin-accelerates-transition-to-software-defined-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/lockheed-martin-accelerates-transition-to-software-defined-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Lockheed Martin Accelerates Transition to Software-Defined Space"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p>Aerospace manufacturer <strong>Lockheed Martin&nbsp;<\/strong>will integrate its new software-defined satellite architecture, SmartSat, on 10 of its nanosatellite missions this year, starting with Linus and Pony Express. The new software-defined capability is designed to allow satellites to change their missions in orbit, letting users \u201cadd capability and assign new missions with a software push, just like adding an app on a smartphone,\u201d the company said in its March 21 announcement.<\/p>\n<p>The Linus project will deliver two 12U cubesats based on the Lockheed Martin LM 50 nanosatellite bus design that will test and validate SmartSat capabilities as well as 3D-printed spacecraft components.<\/p>\n<p>The Pony Express mission aims to send several 6U satellites destined for a Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The group of small satellites will test Radio Frequency (RF)-enabled swarming formations and space-to-space networking. Pony Express 1, designed over the course of nine months, is a pathfinder for a software-defined payload that will test cloud computing infrastructure. The company has yet to announce a set launch date schedule for the programs.<\/p>\n<p>SmartSat uses a high-power, radiation-hardened computer developed by the <strong>National Science Foundation <\/strong>(NSF)\u2019s Center for Space, High-performance, and Resilient Computing (SHREC), which is co-funded by Lockheed Martin. The technology takes advantage of multi-core processing and uses a hypervisor to \u201ccontainerize\u201d virtual machines \u2014 allowing a single computer to operate multiple servers virtually, &nbsp;maximizing memory. The aim of the design is to enable satellites to process more data in-orbit and prioritize which data gets beamed down back to Earth.<\/p>\n<p>Lockheed Martin Space Executive Vice President (VP) Rick Ambrose said that his company was self-funding the LM 50 missions to demonstrate a number of plug-and-play capabilities across its entire fleet, ranging from its LM 50 nanosatellite bus to its flagship LM 2100. \u201cAnd the same technology not only plugs into ground stations, improving space-ground integration, it will one day connect directly with planes, ships and ground vehicles, connecting front-line users to the power of space like never before,\u201d said Ambrose.<\/p>\n<p>He added that Lockheed designed SmartSat with cyber security in mind, as satellites equipped with the new capability could potentially reset themselves faster and diagnose security issues with greater precision. \u201c[SmartSat] satellites can also better detect and defend against cyber threats autonomously, and on-board cyber defenses can be updated regularly to address new threats.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In May, Ambrose will speak on a software-defined panel at SATELLITE 2019, titled \u201cSoftware-Defined Satellites for a Software-Defined Industry.\u201d The panel, which will discuss initiatives and technologies that allow operators to code for a platform and to design and run virtual machines on a satellite, will also feature Lockheed Martin\u2019s largest aerospace competitors \u2014 <strong>Airbus<\/strong>, <strong>Northrop Grumman<\/strong>, and <strong>Thales Alenia Space<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aerospace manufacturer Lockheed Martin&nbsp;will integrate its new software-defined satellite architecture, SmartSat, on 10 of its nanosatellite missions this year, starting with Linus and Pony Express. The new software-defined capability is designed to allow satellites to change their missions in orbit, letting users \u201cadd capability and assign new missions with a software push, just like adding [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62756,"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-62755","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\/62755"}],"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=62755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}