Rapidly Reconfigurable Small-Sats for Enhanced Mission Capabilities

NOVIrsquo;s offering is aimed at providing NASA with a modular and easily reconfigurable spacecraft bus that uses a customizable chassis structure in conjunction with a common set of avionics components and sub-systems for rapid and flexible deployment of payloads / constellations.nbsp;nbsp; The proposed approach not only offers new capabilities, timelines and cost paradigms for fielding CubeSat and ESPA-class spacecraft for a wide variety of mission needs and requirements, but also supports existing efforts to create more readily available COTS-based state-of-the-art products that enable modular, plug-and-play functionality.As part of the proposed Phase I effort, NOVI will:Demonstrate the flexibility and utility of the overall approach by focusing on a complicated and ldquo;distributedrdquo; payload for in-orbit capture and servicing, and use it to complete the detailed design of a ldquo;semi-customizedrdquo; spacecraft tailored for this use-case;Explore the use of AM to incorporate a high delta-V propulsion system with conformal tanks and propellant feed system elements, as well as an AM-based launch adapter and deployment system; andDevelop and trade workflow models for a longer-term manufacturing cell and ldquo;production-linerdquo; that combines flexible AM structure with an inventory of standardized, batch-sourced components to realize modular, swappable architectures that can rapidly be tailored for novel applications (without the need for significant nbsp;modifications to existing systems and platforms).