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This paper tells the story of the evolution of the access to space approach for the ST8 Project, with some insights and comments on the benefits and risks of this approach.
Launched on October 24, 1998, Deep Space 1 (DS1) was the first mission of NASA's New Millennium Program, chartered to validate in space high-risk, new technologies important for future space science programs. The advanced technology payload that was tested on DS1 comprises solar electric propulsion, solar concentrator arrays, autonomous on-board navigation and other autonomous systems, several telecommunications and microelectronics devices, and two low-mass integrated science instrument packages. The mission met or exceeded all of its success criteria. The 12 technologies were rigorously exercised so that subsequent flight projects would not have to incur the cost and risk of being the fist users of these new capabilities. Examples of the benefits to future small body missions from DS1's technologies will be described.
For future applications to precision formation flying missions, NASA's New Millennium Program is scheduled to test colloid micro-Newton thrusters (CMNTs) on the ST7 technology demonstration mission. These CMNTs are part of a disturbance reduction system (DRS) on the ESA SMART-2 Spacecraft or LISA Pathfinder. The goal of the ST7 DRS is to demonstrate technologies necessary to meet the nanometer precision positioning control requirements of the LISA mission. In order to achieve these goals, the CMNTs are required to demonstrate a thrust resolution of less than 0.1 micro-N and a thrust noise of less than 0.1 micro-N/[square root]Hz for thrust levels between 5 and 30 micro-N. Developed by Busek Co. with support from JPL in testing an design, the CMNT has been developed over the last four years into a flight-ready microthrust system. The development, validation testing, and flight unit production of the CMNTs are described. Development tests and analysis include preliminary wear tests, propellant loading process verification, flow testing, and performance verification. Validation and flight unit verification includes thermal and structural analysis, life testing, thermal and dynamic load testing, and performance verification. Final delivery of the units is planned in 2007 with and planned launch and flight demonstration 2009.
NASA's New Millennium Program funded an effort to develop a system cooling technology, which is applicable to all future infrared, sub-millimeter and millimeter cryogenic space telescopes. In particular, this technology is necessary for the proposed large space telescope Single Aperture Far-Infrared Telescope (SAFIR) mission. This technology will also enhance the performance and lower the risk and cost for other cryogenic missions. The new paradigm for cooling to low temperatures will involve passive cooling using lightweight deployable membranes that serve both as sunshields and V-groove radiators, in combination with active cooling using mechanical coolers operating down to 4 K. The Cooling Technology for Large Space Telescopes (LST) mission planned to develop and demonstrate a multi-layered sunshield, which is actively cooled by a multi-stage mechanical cryocooler, and further the models and analyses critical to scaling to future missions. The outer four layers of the sunshield cool passively by radiation, while the innermost layer is actively cooled to enable the sunshield to decrease the incident solar irradiance by a factor of more than one million. The cryocooler cools the inner layer of the sunshield to 20 K, and provides cooling to 6 K at a telescope mounting plate. The technology readiness level (TRL) of 7 will be achieved by the active cooling technology following the technology validation flight in Low Earth Orbit. In accordance with the New Millennium charter, tests and modeling are tightly integrated to advance the technology and the flight design for "ST-class" missions. Commercial off-the-shelf engineering analysis products are used to develop validated modeling capabilities to allow the techniques and results from LST to apply to a wide variety of future missions. The LST mission plans to "rewrite the book" on cryo-thermal testing and modeling techniques, and validate modeling techniques to scale to future space telescopes such as SAFIR.
Within NASA's Science Mission Directorate is a technological program dedicated to improving the cost, mass, and trip time of future scientific missions throughout the Solar System. The In-Space Propulsion Technology (ISPT) Program, established in 2001, is charged with advancing propulsion systems used in space from Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 3 to TRL6, and with planning activities leading to flight readiness. The program's content has changed considerably since inception, as the program has refocused its priorities. One of the technologies that has remained in the ISPT portfolio through these changes is Aerocapture. Aerocapture is the use of a planetary body's atmosphere to slow a vehicle from hyperbolic velocity to a low-energy orbit suitable for science. Prospective use of this technology has repeatedly shown huge mass savings for missions of interest in planetary exploration, at Titan, Neptune, Venus, and Mars. With launch vehicle costs rising, these savings could be the key to mission viability. This paper provides an update on the current state of the Aerocapture technology development effort, summarizes some recent key findings, and highlights hardware developments that are ready for application to Aerocapture vehicles and entry probes alike. Description of Investments: The Aerocapture technology area within the ISPT program has utilized the expertise around NASA to perform Phase A-level studies of future missions, to identify technology gaps that need to be filled to achieve flight readiness. A 2002 study of the Titan Explorer mission concept showed that the combination of Aerocapture and a Solar Electric Propulsion system could deliver a lander and orbiter to Titan in half the time and on a smaller, less expensive launch vehicle, compared to a mission using chemical propulsion for the interplanetary injection and orbit insertion. The study also identified no component technology breakthroughs necessary to implement Aerocapture on such a mission. Similar studies of Aerocapture applications at Neptune, Venus, and Mars were studied in 2003 through 2005. All showed significant performance improvements for the missions studied. Findings from these studies were used to guide the technology development tasks originally solicited in a 2002 NASA ROSS Research Announcement. The tasks are now in their final year and have provided numerous improvements in modeling and hardware, for use in proposals or new mission starts. Major Accomplishments: Since validation of the Aerocapture maneuver requires a space flight, ground developments have focused on modeling and environment prediction, materials, and sensors. Lockheed Martin has designed and built a 2-meter Carbon-Carbon aeroshell "hot structure." The article utilizes co-cured stiffening ribs and advanced insulation to achieve large scale, and up to a 40% reduction in areal density over the Genesis probe construction. This concept would be an efficient solution for probes that experience heat rates near 800-1000 W/cm(exp 2), such as at Venus and Earth. Applied Research Associates has extensively tested a family of efficient ablative TPS materials that provide solutions for a range of heating conditions. These materials are being applied to high-temperature structures built by ATK Space Systems, led by Langley Research Center. One-meter aeroshells will be thermally tested to validate construction and demonstrate higher bondline temperatures, which can lead to mass savings of up to 30% over traditional heatshields. Ames Research Center has developed aeroshell instrumentation that could measure environmental conditions and material performance during atmospheric entry. Instruments to measure TPS recession, heat flux, and catalycity could be combined with traditional sensors to provide a "plug-and-play" system for minimal mass and power, that would acquire flight data for model improvement and risk reduction on future missions. Improved atmospheric and aerothermodynamic models ha also been a major focus of the program. Next Steps: Aerocapture is one of five technologies in competition for a flight validation opportunity through the New Millennium Program. If selected, a fully autonomous vehicle will perform an Aerocapture at Earth in 2010, and flight data will be used to validate the guidance system and the TPS material for science mission infusion.
NASA's New Millennium Program (NMP) has been chartered to identify and validate in space emerging, revolutionary technologies that will enable less costly, more capable future science missions. The program utilizes a unique blend of science guidance and industry partnering to ferret out technology solutions to enable science capabilities in space which are presently technically infeasible, or unaffordable. Those technologies which present an unacceptably high risk to future science missions (whether small PI-led or operational) are bundled into technology validation missions. These missions seek to validate the technologies in a manner consistent with their future uses, thus reducing the associated risk to the first user, and obtaining meaningful science data as well. The Space Readiness Coherent Lidar Experiment (SPARCLE) was approved as the second NMP Earth Observing mission (EO2) in October 1997, and assigned to Marshall Space Flight Center for implementation. Leading up to mission confirmation, NMP sponsored a community workshop in March 1996 to draft Level-1 requirements for a doppler wind lidar mission, as well as other space-based lidar missions (such as DIAL). Subsequently, a study group was formed and met twice to make recommendations on how to perform a comparison of coherent and direct detection wind lidars in space. These recommendations have guided the science validation plan for the SPARCLE mission, and will ensure that future users will be able to confidently assess the risk profile of future doppler wind missions utilizing EO2 technologies. The primary risks to be retired are: (1) Maintenance of optical alignments through launch and operations on orbit, and (2) Successful velocity estimation compensation for the Doppler shift due to the platform motion, and due to the earth's rotation. This includes the need to account for all sources of error associated with pointing control and knowledge. The validation objectives are: (1) Demonstrate measurement of tropospheric winds from space using a scanning coherent Doppler lidar technique that scales to meet future research (e.g. ESSP) and operational (e.g. NPOESS) mission requirements. Specifically, produce and validate LOS wind data with single shot accuracy of 1-2 m/s in regions of high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and low atmospheric wind turbulence and wind shear, (2) Collect the atmospheric and instrument performance data in various scanning modes necessary to validate and improve instrument performance models that will enable the definition of future missions with greater confidence. Such data include aerosol backscatter data over much of the globe, and high SNR data such as that from surface returns, and (3) Produce a set of raw instrument data with which advanced signal processing techniques can be developed. This objective will permit future missions to better understand how to extract wind information from low backscatter regions of the atmosphere.
Under NASA s New Millennium Program Space Technology 8 (ST 8) Project, Goddard Space Fight Center has conducted a Thermal Loop experiment to advance the maturity of the Thermal Loop technology from proof of concept to prototype demonstration in a relevant environment , i.e. from a technology readiness level (TRL) of 3 to a level of 6. The thermal Loop is an advanced thermal control system consisting of a miniature loop heat pipe (MLHP) with multiple evaporators and multiple condensers designed for future small system applications requiring low mass, low power, and compactness. The MLHP retains all features of state-of-the-art loop heat pipes (LHPs) and offers additional advantages to enhance the functionality, performance, versatility, and reliability of the system. An MLHP breadboard was built and tested in the laboratory and thermal vacuum environments for the TRL 4 and TRL 5 validations, respectively, and an MLHP proto-flight unit was built and tested in a thermal vacuum chamber for the TRL 6 validation. In addition, an analytical model was developed to simulate the steady state and transient behaviors of the MLHP during various validation tests. The MLHP demonstrated excellent performance during experimental tests and the analytical model predictions agreed very well with experimental data. All success criteria at various TRLs were met. Hence, the Thermal Loop technology has reached a TRL of 6. This paper presents the validation results, both experimental and analytical, of such a technology development effort.
The Space Technology 5 (ST5) mission is a NASA New Millennium Program project that will validate new technologies for future space science missions and demonstrate the feasibility of building launching and operating multiple, miniature spacecraft that can collect research-quality in-situ science measurements. The three satellites in the ST5 constellation will be launched into a sun-synchronous Earth orbit in early 2006. ST5 fits into the 25-kilogram and 24-watt class of very small but fully capable spacecraft. The new technologies and design concepts for a compact power and command and data handling (C&DH) avionics system are presented. The 2-card ST5 avionics design incorporates new technology components while being tightly constrained in mass, power and volume. In order to hold down the mass and volume, and quali& new technologies for fUture use in space, high efficiency triple-junction solar cells and a lithium-ion battery were baselined into the power system design. The flight computer is co-located with the power system electronics in an integral spacecraft structural enclosure called the card cage assembly. The flight computer has a full set of uplink, downlink and solid-state recording capabilities, and it implements a new CMOS Ultra-Low Power Radiation Tolerant logic technology. There were a number of challenges imposed by the ST5 mission. Specifically, designing a micro-sat class spacecraft demanded that minimizing mass, volume and power dissipation would drive the overall design. The result is a very streamlined approach, while striving to maintain a high level of capability, The mission's radiation requirements, along with the low voltage DC power distribution, limited the selection of analog parts that can operate within these constraints. The challenge of qualifying new technology components for the space environment within a short development schedule was another hurdle. The mission requirements also demanded magnetic cleanliness in order to reduce the effect of stray (spacecraft-generated) magnetic fields on the science-grade magnetometer.
The New Millennium Program (NMP) is a NASA technology program that focuses on the validation of advanced spacecraft and instrumentation technologies in space. This program specifically seeks technologies that could significantly benefit future space and Earth science missions by enabling new science capabilities and reducing life cycle costs. These technologies must also require a validation in space to mitigate risks to the first science users, and provide cross-cutting benefits to both NASA's Earth and Space Science enterprises. The NASA Office of Earth Science (OES) directed the NMP to focus the third Earth Observing mission, E03, on innovative measurement concepts that would facilitate remote sensing observations from orbits beyond conventional low-Earth orbit (LEO). These orbits include geosynchronous orbits, highly elliptical orbits, mid-Earth and high-Earth orbits, and other unique vantage points such as L1 and L2. To maximize the input from the Earth science community, a NASA Research Announcement (NRA) was released to solicit innovative measurement concepts for this NMP flight. Because the NMP is a technology validation program, rather than a conventional science program, the NRA required that these measurement concepts employ revolutionary technologies and/or measurement strategies that will enable future science missions from orbits beyond LEO. Another requirement was that a validation in space was needed to reduce real or perceived risks of this concept to future science users. The proposals submitted in response to this NRA were peer reviewed by the NASA OES. The measurement concepts selected through this process will be summarized in this presentation. The E03 measurement concept NRA did not solicit complete mission concepts or flight hardware. Instead, the selected investigators will join integrated project formulation teams to define the mission for the demonstration of the measurement technique and participate in mission design trades and implementation planning. The teams will define and document the measurement approach, the required technologies, the validation plan, the scalability of the design to future science missions, and the infusion path for the completely validated instrument. During this project formulation phase, the specific technologies required to implement each measurement concept will be solicited through an open technology solicitation, and the technology providers will be added to the integrated teams. Once a complete candidate mission concept has been formulated for each measurement concept, these concepts will be subjected to a comprehensive review. The Associate Administrator of the OES will use the results of this review to select a single concept for the E03 flight opportunity. That mission concept will enter its implementation phase, which is expected to last for less than 36 months before launch. During this phase, and after launch, the implementation team will work with the NMP to document and disseminate the information gathered during the flight qualification testing and operations of the measurement concept and its component technologies. This information will be archived and published, where appropriate, to encourage the rapid infusion of these validated technologies into future space and Earth science missions. I
This paper presents the development of the Thermal Loop experiment under NASA's New Millennium Program Space Technology 8 (ST8) Project. The Thermal Loop experiment was originally planned for validating in space an advanced heat transport system consisting of a miniature loop heat pipe (MLHP) with multiple evaporators and multiple condensers. Details of the thermal loop concept, technical advances and benefits, Level 1 requirements and the technology validation approach are described. An MLHP breadboard has been built and tested in the laboratory and thermal vacuum environments, and has demonstrated excellent performance that met or exceeded the design requirements. The MLHP retains all features of state-of-the-art loop heat pipes and offers additional advantages to enhance the functionality, performance, versatility, and reliability of the system. In addition, an analytical model has been developed to simulate the steady state and transient operation of the MHLP, and the model predictions agreed very well with experimental results. A protoflight MLHP has been built and is being tested in a thermal vacuum chamber to validate its performance and technical readiness for a flight experiment.
Two flight-qualified clusters of four Colloid Micro-Newton Thruster (CMNT) systems have been delivered to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The clusters will provide precise spacecraft control for the drag-free technology demonstration mission, Space Technology 7 (ST7). The ST7 mission is sponsored by the NASA New Millennium Program and will demonstrate precision formation flying technologies for future missions such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission. The ST7 disturbance reduction system (DRS) will be on the ESA LISA Pathfinder spacecraft using the European gravitational reference sensor (GRS) as part of the ESA LISA Technology Package (LTP). Developed by Busek Co. Inc., with support from JPL in design and testing, the CMNT has been developed over the last six years into a flight-ready and flight-qualified microthruster system, the first of its kind. Recent flight-unit qualification tests have included vibration and thermal vacuum environmental testing, as well as performance verification and acceptance tests. All tests have been completed successfully prior to delivery to JPL. Delivery of the first flight unit occurred in February of 2008 with the second unit following in May of 2008. Since arrival at JPL, the units have successfully passed through mass distribution, magnetic, and EMI/EMC measurements and tests as part of the integration and test (I&T) activities including the integrated avionics unit (IAU). Flight software sequences have been tested and validated with the full flight DRS instrument successfully to the extent possible in ground testing, including full functional and 72 hour autonomous operations tests. Delivery of the cluster assemblies along with the IAU to ESA for integration into the LISA Pathfinder spacecraft is planned for the summer of 2008 with a planned launch and flight demonstration in late 2010.
Under NASA s New Millennium Program Space Technology 8 (ST 8) Project, four experiments Thermal Loop, Dependable Microprocessor, SAILMAST, and UltraFlex - were conducted to advance the maturity of individual technologies from proof of concept to prototype demonstration in a relevant environment , i.e. from a technology readiness level (TRL) of 3 to a level of 6. This paper presents the new technologies and validation approach of the Thermal Loop experiment. The Thermal Loop is an advanced thermal control system consisting of a miniature loop heat pipe (MLHP) with multiple evaporators and multiple condensers designed for future small system applications requiring low mass, low power, and compactness. The MLHP retains all features of state-of-the-art loop heat pipes (LHPs) and offers additional advantages to enhance the functionality, performance, versatility, and reliability of the system. Details of the thermal loop concept, technical advances, benefits, objectives, level 1 requirements, and performance characteristics are described. Also included in the paper are descriptions of the test articles and mathematical modeling used for the technology validation. An MLHP breadboard was built and tested in the laboratory and thermal vacuum environments for TRL 4 and TRL 5 validations, and an MLHP proto-flight unit was built and tested in a thermal vacuum chamber for the TRL 6 validation. In addition, an analytical model was developed to simulate the steady state and transient behaviors of the MLHP during various validation tests. Capabilities and limitations of the analytical model are also addressed.