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 have been designed, fabricated, integrated, and tested at the University of Texas at Austin in preparation for a scheduled launch in December 2009.

The two nanosatellites will be deployed in orbit from a Minotaur IV rocket to perform autonomous on-orbit real-time relative navigation as they drift through space. A crosslink between the satellites will be used to compute relative solutions on-orbit, which will be downlinked to the ground for performance monitoring. One satellite will maintain its orbit using a new micro-discharge plasma thruster technology being developed at UT. 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 micro-thruster.

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 monitored and commanded through ONESTOP, a tool developed in-house to control a distributed network of ground stations through a Web interface. The satellites will communicate on amateur radio frequencies using published telemetry formats. 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.