THERMAL CONTROL NANO-SAT BASED ON SUCCESSFUL SPACE TESTING ONBOARD THE MIDSTAR1 SATELLITE, ECLIPSE ELECTROC…

Public award description

THERMAL CONTROL NANO-SAT BASED ON SUCCESSFUL SPACE TESTING ONBOARD THE MIDSTAR1 SATELLITE, ECLIPSE ELECTROCHROMICS HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED BY A NUMBER OF ORGANIZATIONS AS WELL AS NASA AS A HIGH INTEREST TECHNOLOGY. FOR NANOSATS, THE CRITICAL DESIGN CHALLENGE IS ACHIEVING AUTONOMOUS CONTROL OF THE ECLIPSEVEDSTM FOR SPACECRAFT THERMAL SELF REGULATION WITHOUT THE NEED FOR HUMAN INTERVENTION. TO ACHIEVE THIS GOAL, ECLIPSE PROPOSES IN PHASE I TO EMPLOY ECLIPSEVEDTM TECHNOLOGY AND DEMONSTRATE AUTOMATED CONTROL SYSTEMS CAPABLE OF IN-FLIGHT THERMAL REGULATION OF A CUBESAT OR OTHER SMALL SATELLITE. PHASE I WILL INCLUDE THE CONSTRUCTION OF A SINGLE SMALL SATELLITE PANEL FOR IN-HOUSE TESTING AND PRINCIPALLY WORK ON THE HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIRED FOR AUTONOMOUS REGULATION. IN PHASE II, ECLIPSE WILL BUILD A COMPLETE MULTI-PANEL CUBESAT AND WORK WITH MARSHALL SPACE CENTER TO LAB TEST A COMPLETELY FUNCTIONAL PROTOTYPE.