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TacSat-2 Enters the New Year Healthy
Date: 02/07/2007Description:
After a successful launch on December 16, 2006, Air Force Research Laboratory’s TacSat-2 micro satellite is performing nominally with all subsystems checked out and many of its experiments already gathering data. This despite a challenging first 48 hours where, after initial contact following launch, ground controllers were unable to contact the satellite due to a ground station problem.
“This shows the robustness of the TacSat-2 spacecraft that it can survive what is a very traumatic event for any type of spacecraft and still work so well,” said Dr. Peter Wegner, AFRL’s Responsive Space lead. “This recovery is a credit to the whole TacSat-2 team, including AFRL and MicroSat Systems, Inc. (MSI) who built the spacecraft.”
From what could be determined by subsequent telemetry, the spacecraft performed as needed putting itself into a “safe mode” while it waited to hear from the ground. While there were concerns that this period may have resulted in some sort of damage to the spacecraft, in the subsequent on-orbit operations checkout that has been performed since contact has been reestablished all of the subsystems have shown nominal performance.
"With responsive space missions, we are exploring ways to rapidly augment our existing space capabilities or to rapidly reconstitute them if they are lost,” said Henry "Lad" Curtis, MSI program manager. “Learning to operate spacecraft in a responsive mode is an important milestone in establishing this new mission paradigm.”
TacSat-2 is an important first step toward developing low-cost, customized and rapidly deployable space capabilities for theater warfighters, who someday may place a number of these assets into orbit as they prepare for contingency operations. TacSat-2 features 11 instrument packages that include experiments directly supporting the warfighter on the ground.
“We are extremely proud to have earned our “space flight heritage” on this important Air Force program and believe that demonstrated on-orbit performance of this highly capable satellite will open the doors for our company to additional military and commercial and NASA opportunities”, said MSI President John Roth. “This critical event in our company’s short history is a catalyst for what we expect to be a very exciting 2007.”
MSI designed, built, and environmentally qualified the satellite bus, and was responsible for both the primary Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) solar arrays and the experimental thin-film solar arrays. They worked together with AFRL to perform the final integration and test as well as the early operations of the satellite.
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