Advanced Transfer and Relay Stage

In response to the 2024 NASA SBIR Phase II solicitation subtopic Z8.09, “Small Spacecraft Transfer Stage Development,” Advanced Space, LLC (Advanced Space) proposes to mature mission architectures and requirements for customizing a low-cost transfer stage that will deliver small spacecraft to nontraditional orbits and provide position, navigation, timing (PNT), and communications relay services for the deployed small spacecraft. The proposed solution defines a set of modular mission architectures and concepts of operations (ConOps) that match launch vehicle and transfer stage capabilities for deploying a primary payload in its destination orbit. In Phase I, Advanced Space conducted a series of mission design and navigation analyses to various cislunar and lunar mission destinations. We partnered with Firefly Aerospace, Inc. (Firefly) to characterize their orbital vehicle (Elytra) as a transfer stage to demonstrate the capability to reach these mission destinations and quantified the additional required capabilities to reach and navigate unique orbits at these mission destinations. The team analyzed the resulting design reference missions (DRMs) to assess the required capabilities of a communications subsystem to provide PNT and communications relay services to end-users in proximity. The Phase II project will focus on two specific DRMs: 1) a standards-based, interoperable lunar communications pathfinder, and 2) a Mars relay communications network. Mr. Michael Caudill again will be the Principal Investigator (PI) for the proposed project. Mr. Caudill is a Senior Navigation Engineer at Advanced Space and has extensive experience with spacecraft navigation and state estimation across widely ranging mission architectures and destinations, as well as mission operations management with Advanced Space’s active CAPSTONE mission.