The Starling spacecraft are digitally rendered in NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System interactive app, allowing users to track the swarm in real-time and observe their orbits relative to other space missions and celestial bodies.
NASA
NASA’s Starling CubeSats are zipping through low Earth orbit in the agency’s latest test of robotic swarm technologies for space. The four Starling spacecraft, launched in July 2023, are testing a group of small satellites ability to coordinate and cooperate independently without real-time updates from mission control.
The Starling mission, managed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, will test multiple flight patterns and autonomous capabilities, including maneuvering to stay together as a group, creating and patching their own communications network, keeping track of each other’s relative position without use of GPS, and autonomously changing their combined science data collection strategy based on the latest readings from onboard sensors.
Autonomous technologies are vital to NASA’s space science and exploration goals, especially when exploring environments far from Earth where signal delays make real-time maneuvering impractical or impossible. Satellites and spacecraft operating in a networked, autonomous, and coordinated capacity will help humanity explore the unknown and conduct better science than ever before.
NASA’s Ames Research Center leads the Starling project. NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology program, based at Ames and within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), funds and manages the Starling mission. Blue Canyon Technologies designed and manufactured the spacecraft buses and is providing mission operations support. Rocket Lab USA, Inc. provided launch and integration services. Partners supporting Starling’s payload experiments include Stanford University’s Space Rendezvous Lab in Stanford, California, Emergent Space Technologies of Laurel, Maryland, CesiumAstro of Austin, Texas, L3Harris Technologies, Inc., of Melbourne, Florida, and NASA Ames – with funding support by NASA’s Game Changing Development program within STMD.
For news media:
Members of the news media interested in covering this topic should reach out to the NASA Ames newsroom.
NASA astronaut and Expedition 70 Flight Engineer Loral O’Hara is pictured trying on her spacesuit and testing its components aboard the International Space Station’s Quest airlock in preparation for an upcoming spacewalk.
Spacewalk preparations topped the Expedition 70 crew members’ schedule today as two Roscosmos cosmonauts gear up to exit the station on Wednesday, Oct. 25, and two NASA astronauts look ahead to their first spacewalk next week.
Flight Engineers Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub will venture outside of the International Space Station’s Poisk module at 2:10 p.m. EDT on Wednesday to install communications hardware, deploy a nanosatellite, and inspect the external backup radiator that experienced a coolant leak. The duo worked together today prepping tools they’ll use during their seven-hour excursion and installing lights and video cameras to the helmets of the Orlan suits they will don.
NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara worked in tandem today as they prepare for their first spacewalk next week. The duo will exit the station on Monday at 8:05 a.m. to remove the Radio Frequency Group—an electronics box—and replace bearing assemblies on a solar array rotary joint. Today, their prep was geared towards procedure reviews and will continue to ramp up throughout the rest of the week. Later in the evening, they were joined by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa and ESA (European Space Agency) Commander Andreas Mogensen for a conference with grounds teams.
Last month, the final round of Arabidopsis plants was harvested from Plant Habitat-03, an investigation that aims to help researchers understand how adaptations in one generation of plants could transfer to the next, given the environmental stress of microgravity. Today, Mogensen cleaned the facility and prepped Seed Bags for future return to Earth. Meanwhile, Furukawa removed and replaced the filter assembly on an orbital system that processes wastewater.
While most of the station residents focused on prep and procedure reviews for the upcoming spacewalks, Roscosmos Flight Engineer Konstantin Borisov completed maintenance tasks and conducted an experiment that assesses the glow of Earth’s atmosphere at night in near ultraviolet.
NASA Awards NOAA’s QuickSounder Spacecraft Contract
NASA
NASA, on behalf of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), has awarded a delivery order under the Rapid Spacecraft Acquisition IV (Rapid-IV) contract to Southwest Research Institute of San Antonio for the QuickSounder spacecraft.
The firm-fixed-price delivery order covers all phases of QuickSounder’s operations to include spacecraft development, integration of NOAA’s Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder Engineering Development Unit, spacecraft shipment, supporting launch operations, three years of mission operations, and eventual spacecraft decommissioning.
The total value of the order is $54,973,400 with the period of performance beginning Wednesday, Oct. 25, and scheduled to run until May 2029.
QuickSounder is the first project in NOAA’s Near Earth Orbit Network. As a pathfinder mission, QuickSounder will support NOAA’s next generation satellite architecture for its future low Earth orbit program, which will provide mission-critical data to support NOAA’s National Weather Service and the nation’s weather industry.
Rapid IV contracts serve as a fast and flexible means for the government to acquire spacecraft and related components, equipment, and services in support of NASA missions and/or other federal government agencies. The spacecraft designs, related items, and services may be tailored, as needed, to meet the unique needs of each mission.
The Near Earth Orbit Network is a collaborative mission between NASA and NOAA. NASA will manage the development and launch of the satellites for NOAA, which will operate them and deliver data to users worldwide. NOAA, as the mission lead, provides funding, technical requirements, and post-launch operations. NASA and NOAA will work with commercial partners to design and build the network’s spacecraft and instruments.
For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
Dr. Natasha Schatzman Receives the Vertical Flight Society (VFS) 2023 Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Award
1 min read
Dr. Natasha Schatzman Receives the Vertical Flight Society (VFS) 2023 Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Award
Dr. Natasha Schatzman, NASA Ames Research Center
NASA / Dominic Hart
In May 2023, Dr. Natasha Schatzman received the Vertical Flight Society Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Award for her vertical flight research at NASA Ames Research Center. This annual award is given to a VFS member who is thirty-five years old or younger for outstanding contributions to vertical flight technology. The award announcement notes that Dr. Schatzman “was recognized for outstanding vertical lift research (internationally recognized in rotorcraft acoustics and full-scale wind tunnel acoustics testing), for extensive contributions to the VFS technical community and local VFS San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, and for outstanding mentorship in the rotorcraft field.” She began her work at NASA Ames Research Center in 2008 as an intern, and she now oversees various acoustic experimental and computational key aspects of Revolutionary Vertical Life Technology (RVLT) Project, which includes leading rotor acoustic tests in the 40-foot by 80-Foot Wind Tunnel at NASA Ames Research Center. Dr. Schatzman holds a Ph.D. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Dragonfly Team Utilizes Unique NASA Facilities to Shape Its Innovative Titan-bound Rotorcraft
Dragonfly team members review the half-scale lander model after it underwent wind tunnel testing at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Pictured are (from left) Art Azarbarzin, Juan Cruz, Wayne Dellinger, Zibi Turtle, Chuck Hebert, Ken Hibbard, Bernadine Juliano and Bruce Owens.
Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman
With its dense atmosphere and low gravity, Saturn’s moon Titan is a great place to fly.
But well before NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft lander soars through Titan’s skies, researchers on Earth – led by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland – are making sure their designs and models for the nuclear-powered, car-sized drone will work in a truly unique environment.
Artist’s impression of the Dragonfly rotorcraft lander on the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon and a major target in NASA’s quest to assess habitability and search for potential signs of life beyond Earth on worlds across the solar system.
NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben
Dragonfly, NASA’s only mission to the surface of another ocean world, is designed to investigate the complex chemistry that is the precursor to life. The vehicle, which APL will build and operate, will be equipped with cameras, sensors and samplers to examine swaths of Titan known to contain organic materials that may, at some point in Titan’s complex history, have come in contact with liquid water beneath the organic-rich, icy surface.
To transport those science instruments across the moon, Dragonfly’s four pairs of coaxial rotors (meaning one rotor is stacked above the other) will need to slice through Titan’s dense, nitrogen-rich atmosphere. Four times in the past three years, the mission team has headed to Virginia to test its flight systems in one-of-a-kind facilities at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
Mission engineers have conducted two test campaigns in NASA Langley’s 14-by-22-foot Subsonic Tunnel, and two in the 16-foot Transonic Dynamics Tunnel (TDT). They use the Subsonic Tunnel to validate computational fluid dynamics models and data gathered from integrated test platforms – terrestrial drones outfitted with Dragonfly-designed flight electronics. They use the variable-density heavy gas capabilities of the TDT to validate its models under simulated Titan atmospheric conditions — one aerodynamic stability test of the aeroshell that is used to deliver the Lander to a release point above Titan’s surface and one to model the Lander’s rotors aerodynamics.
“All of these tests feed into our Dragonfly Titan simulations and performance predictions,” said Ken Hibbard, Dragonfly mission systems engineer at APL.
On its latest trip to NASA Langley, in June, the team set up a half-scale Dragonfly lander model, complete with eight rotors, in the 14-by-22 Subsonic Tunnel. Test lead Bernadine Juliano of APL said the campaign focused on two flight configurations: Dragonfly’s descent and transition to powered flight upon arrival at Titan, and forward flight over Titan’s surface.
“We tested conditions across the expected flight envelope at a variety of wind speeds, rotor speeds, and flight angles to assess the aerodynamic performance of the vehicle,” she said. “We completed more than 700 total runs, encompassing over 4,000 individual data points. All test objectives were successfully accomplished and the data will help increase confidence in our simulation models on Earth before extrapolating to Titan conditions.”
APL engineers are analyzing the 14-by-22 test data with mission flight team partners at the University of Central Florida, Penn State University, Lockheed Martin Sikorsky, NASA Langley and NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California. Rick Heisler, the Dragonfly wind tunnel test lead from APL who heads the TDT test campaigns, said each trip to NASA Langley has given the team a chance to hone its technical models and designs and, specifically in the TDT, gain a better idea of how Dragonfly’s rotors will perform in Titan’s exotic atmosphere.
“The heavy gas environment in the TDT has a density three-and-a-half times higher than air while operating at sea level ambient pressure and temperature,” Heisler said, “This allows the rotors to operate at near-Titan conditions and better replicate the lift and dynamic loading the actual lander will experience. The data we acquire are used to validate predictions of the lander aerodynamics, aero-structural performance and rotor fatigue life in the harsh cryogenic environment on Titan.”
“With Dragonfly, we’re turning science fiction into exploration fact,” Hibbard said. “The mission is coming together piece by piece, and we’re excited for every next step toward sending this revolutionary rotorcraft across the skies and surface of Titan.”
Part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, Dragonfly is scheduled to launch no earlier than 2027 and arrive at Titan in the mid-2030s. Principal Investigator Elizabeth Turtle of APL leads a mission team that includes engineers, scientists and specialists from APL as well as NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado; NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California; NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia; Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania; University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida; Lockheed Martin Sikorsky in Stratford, Connecticut; Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego; Honeybee Robotics in Pasadena, California; NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales) in Paris; the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Cologne, Germany; and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) in Tokyo.
