Executive Summary

Enabling technologies for nanosatellite formations are being demonstrated under the Formation Autonomy Spacecraft with Thrust, Relnav, Attitude, and Crosslink (FASTRAC) program. FASTRAC image

Two flight-ready nanosatellites are being designed, fabricated, integrated, and tested at the University of Texas at Austin during the two year period of performance from April 2003 to March 2005.

In orbit, the two nanosatellites will be deployed from a Space Shuttle or similar launch opportunity and they will perform autonomous relative navigation as they drift. A crosslink between the satellites will be used to compute relative solutions on-orbit, which will be telemetered to the ground for performance monitoring. One satellite will maintain its orbit using a new plasma microthruster technology being developed at the University of Texas at Austin. The other satellite will be allowed to freely drift as a control mass, and the different orbit decay rates will demonstrate the effectiveness of the microthruster.

The two nanosatellites will be tracked from the ground with an innovative distributed communications system using a network of university tracking stations. Each satellite will be represented as a web page which may be commanded using a point and click graphical user interface. The satellites will communicate on amateur radio frequencies using published telemetry formats and public partners will be encouraged to provide recorded telemetry to the project web site to enhance science return.

Scientific research will include studies of Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field using the two satellite formation. The communications performance of the satellite crosslinks in low Earth orbit will also be examined.