Nanosatellite Payloads for Tactical Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance

Skeyeon, Inc. has developed all technologies necessary to orbit an Earth Observation, EO, satellite at 250 km, developing a vehicle design; atomic oxygen resistant, low drag materials; high bandwidth, real-time RF links; electric propulsion for 3 year missions; and a 1 meter resolution optical telescope compressed into a 10 cm high framework. A constellation of 100’s-1,000’s of these vehicles will generate high resolution images at <1 hour revisit rates. This vision requires a vehicle cost of $250k, reducing to $100k in volume. Not only will an EO breakthrough, it also solves the space junk problem, since our vehicles will operate 100’s of km below LEO satellites with an expected de-orbit time of weeks. Skeyeon’s developments have been funded by multi-million dollar angel (small) investors and all but the telescope have been fully demonstrated. The first telescope requires a stray-light baffle that complicates vehicle design and attitude control. We also expect initially to achieve about 1.4 m measured resolution due to manufacturing limitations. With this SBIR funding, Skeyeon’s team will improve the telescope design by inserting internal stray-light baffles while improving resolution to the desired 1 m. We will also evaluate manufacturing elements that can reduce telescope production costs.