Session
Technical Session VII: Advanced Technologies II
Abstract
A satlet is a satellite architecture component into which the functional capabilities of a conventional spacecraft are decomposed and can then be aggregated back together to provide desired subsystem capabilities. NovaWurks has successfully developed satlet prototypes for the DARPA Phoenix program. These smaller disaggregated subsystem building blocks are called HISats, or Hyper-Integrated Satlets. By reassembling a sufficient amount of HISats and payloads, a spacecraft with the required capabilities can be formed by aggregation of their resources. HISats are distributed across a platform and interact through a variety of links. Removing some of the physical location dependencies between the resources of a spacecraft brings several attributes, such as reliability and flexibility. Building capabilities by aggregation of resources provides rapid scalability and robustness. A spacecraft bus which is composed of resource modules can be readily fit together to support a variety of payloads. However decomposing and disaggregating a spacecraft, and letting the different resources manifest separately, leads to several architectural and technological concerns which are related to the shared resources within the aggregated satlet network. Investigation of these challenges, solutions, and demonstration results from Phase 1 of the program are presented. Concepts for future space systems are discussed.
Presentation
Phoenix and the New Satellite Paradigm Created by HISat
A satlet is a satellite architecture component into which the functional capabilities of a conventional spacecraft are decomposed and can then be aggregated back together to provide desired subsystem capabilities. NovaWurks has successfully developed satlet prototypes for the DARPA Phoenix program. These smaller disaggregated subsystem building blocks are called HISats, or Hyper-Integrated Satlets. By reassembling a sufficient amount of HISats and payloads, a spacecraft with the required capabilities can be formed by aggregation of their resources. HISats are distributed across a platform and interact through a variety of links. Removing some of the physical location dependencies between the resources of a spacecraft brings several attributes, such as reliability and flexibility. Building capabilities by aggregation of resources provides rapid scalability and robustness. A spacecraft bus which is composed of resource modules can be readily fit together to support a variety of payloads. However decomposing and disaggregating a spacecraft, and letting the different resources manifest separately, leads to several architectural and technological concerns which are related to the shared resources within the aggregated satlet network. Investigation of these challenges, solutions, and demonstration results from Phase 1 of the program are presented. Concepts for future space systems are discussed.
