BOSTON -- The U.S. Army has finished work on a batch of eight tiny communications satellites developed in less than one year, and hopes to begin flight experiments with at least one of the nanosatellites in 2010, according to an official involved with the effort.

 

John London, program manager for the effort at Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) in Huntsville, Ala., said the command has funding to launch one of the nanosatellites in its 2010 budget request and has the payload manifested. He declined to go into further detail.

 

London, who also serves as SMDC's nanosatellite technology manager, said in an April 27 interview that the command has identified a launch opportunity for four more of the nanosatellites in late 2010, and is seeking funding to make that happen.

 

The Army began working on the SMDC-Operational Nanosatellite Effect (ONE) effort, which is intended to demonstrate the use of a swarm of tiny satellites to augment beyond-line-of-sight communications coverage, in response to demand from troops in the field. The service last developed and launched its own satellite in 1960.

 

SMDC began working with Miltec Missiles and Space of Huntsville, a subsidiary of Ducommun Inc. of Carson, Calif., on the design and development of the satellites in May 2008. One of the most significant challenges was ensuring that parts suppliers understood the urgency of the tight schedule and delivered their components on time, London said.

 

Each satellite cost about $700,000 to build, though if the service elected to pursue a production run — a decision that London emphasized has not yet been made — the cost per unit likely would be around $300,000, he said. Even if deployed in large numbers, operational variants of the nanosatellites would still represent an affordable method of augmenting existing communications satellites to provide persistent coverage from low Earth orbit of a particular area of interest, he said.

 

Each SMDC-ONE satellite weighs around 4 kilograms, not including the Poly Picosatellite Orbital Deployer (P-POD) designed by California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, that will be used to release the craft into orbit. Launch and integration likely will cost $150,000-$200,000 for each nanosatellite, he said.

 

SMDC has already developed the ground system that will be used for command and control during the first demonstration with one spacecraft, London said. The goals for the first demonstration — and  the sophistication of the ground system, which will be located at the Army's Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville — are relatively simple, he said. The objective is to prove that the SMDC-ONE design works properly in space, he said.

 

After demonstrating command and control of the initial satellite along with the transfer of data, SMDC intends to conduct a more operationally realistic experiment with the four nanosatellites it hopes to launch later in 2010, London said. Work on the ground equipment for the second demonstration is ongoing, he said.

 

Those demonstrations will help determine SMDC's future direction in nanosatellite work, London said.

 

"It's one thing to develop them on a timeline; now we need to go fly them and see how well they operate in an orbital environment," London said.

 

SMDC envisions that future nanosatellites could include GPS hardware to enable greater onboard autonomy, S-band communications links to handle larger volumes of data, and software defined radio transponders that enable greater frequency flexibility, according to an SMDC news release dated April 28.

 

Ivy Pinion, senior vice president of Miltec's Missiles and Space Division, said the company had not done any design work for the SMDC-ONE nanosatellites prior to being enlisted by the Army last May to do the work.

 

"We literally started with a blank piece of paper and made the 12-month goal," Pinion said in an April 27 interview.

 

Miltec never built an integrated satellite prior to the SMDC-ONE program, Pinion said, though he noted the company has had experience with "space related vehicles and assets." He declined to be more specific.

 

Pinion said the company hopes its experience with SMDC-ONE will open the door to further nanosatellite work with other government agencies. Nanosatellites have generally been used for research and development, and success with the SMDC-ONE program could lead to increased interest in spacecraft in this class as operational assets, he said.

 

 SMDC began the SMDC-ONE effort with interest in building at least one of the satellites in-house. However, the command found that there was not time to do this given the tight program schedule, though it is working to acquire the facilities, equipment and manpower to build nanosatellites in-house in the future, London said.