The Small Payload Access to Space Experiment (SPASE): Using Non-Traditional Aerospace Technology to Enable a New Generation of Low-Cost Missions

The Small Payload Access to Space Experiment (SPASE): Using Non-Traditional Aerospace Technology to Enable a New Generation of Low-Cost Missions

Launching on STS-108 Endeavour in late 2001, the Small Payload Access to Space Experiment (SPASE) demonstrates a number of new technologies, efficient ways to conduct a nanospacecraft development program, and how to take such a spacecraft through the Shuttle Hitchhiker safety and integration process. This paper describes the essential “lessons learned” in each of these areas. Commercial solar panels, batteries, imagers, photocells, integrated circuits, and manufacturing techniques are used throughout the vehicle, bringing the low cost and high manufacturing reliability of these products into the space realm. Core personnel carried the program from conception through proposal, requirements definition, design, development, integration, test, and delivery, making the whole program significantly more efficient. Shuttle safety issues were addressed from the beginning and continually throughout the program, as part of (not added to) the development effort. The information learned throughout this process, and the new doors opened by this demonstration – such as the first use of Lithium-Ion batteries in a Shuttle payload – help make space utilization more efficient, more affordable, and easier for future missions. AeroAstro’s Bitsy nanospacecraft kernel will be flight-proven by the SPASE mission.