Advanced Transfer and Relay Stage

In response to the 2024 NASA SBIR Phase II solicitation subtopic Z8.09, “Small Spacecraft Transfer Stage Development,” Advanced Space, LLC (Advanced Space) proposes to mature mission architectures and requirements for customizing a low-cost transfer stage that will deliver small spacecraft to nontraditional orbits and provide position, navigation, timing (PNT), and communications relay services for the deployed small spacecraft. The proposed solution defines a set of modular mission architectures and concepts of operations (ConOps) that match launch vehicle and transfer stage capabilities for deploying a primary payload in its destination orbit. In Phase I, Advanced Space conducted a series of mission design and navigation analyses to various cislunar and lunar mission destinations. We partnered with Firefly Aerospace, Inc. (Firefly) to characterize their orbital vehicle (Elytra) as a transfer stage to demonstrate the capability to reach these mission destinations and quantified the additional required capabilities to reach and navigate unique orbits at these mission destinations. The team analyzed the resulting design reference missions (DRMs) to assess the required capabilities of a communications subsystem to provide PNT and communications relay services to end-users in proximity. The Phase II project will focus on two specific DRMs: 1) a standards-based, interoperable lunar communications pathfinder, and 2) a Mars relay communications network. Mr. Michael Caudill again will be the Principal Investigator (PI) for the proposed project. Mr. Caudill is a Senior Navigation Engineer at Advanced Space and has extensive experience with spacecraft navigation and state estimation across widely ranging mission architectures and destinations, as well as mission operations management with Advanced Space’s active CAPSTONE mission.

Applications with NASA include the Near Space Network Service (NSNS) model, future missions with relay communication requirements in the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, and payloads for upcoming missions sponsored by the different directorates, much like the secondary payloads on Artemis I. For NSNS, NASA envisions a constellation of satellites at the Moon that can provide communications and navigation services throughout cislunar space and across the Moon’s surface. Eventually, when enough missions are sent to the Moon using this architecture, several nodes will be orbiting near the Moon with the agency’s desired communication and navigation services. These missions will incorporate NASA’s LunaNet Interoperability Specifications, which will push the standards forward and identify gaps in the standards, which is critical for the future of the lunar economy. The CLPS missions can significantly benefit from this architecture. While most CLPS missions will have dedicated transfer ability, those on the lunar far side have specific relay needs. Existing nodes of this architecture already at the Moon or separately launched relay satellites with the transfer stage’s redundant relay capability will reduce the complexity of mission planning for far-side landings significantly. On the Artemis I mission, the Space Launch System vehicle flew ten different low-cost CubeSats from different NASA directorates. Three other missions were supposed to be on the launch but were incomplete by the integration deadline. The proposed transfer stage will provide a dedicated stage for the types of low-cost NASA CubeSat missions like the three that missed the deadline and will enable relay services to provide these low-cost missions with precise navigation and reliable communications back to Earth. Most importantly, this technology will be an enabler for NASA missions that have been infeasible in the past due to overburdening communication and propulsion requirements. Applications for the commercial and national security markets include lunar users from the DARPA LunA-10 program; international Moon landings by JAXA, ISRO, SpaceIL, and KARI; deep-space missions to Mars science applications; and space domain awareness applications from passive RF signatures. Growing commercial interest in returning to the Moon will be enabled by small satellites with reduced cost and complexity. Additionally, DARPA is conducting a LunA-10 study, which is investigating developing lunar infrastructure over the next 10 years. One component that must be addressed to make this infrastructure a reality is reliable communication and navigation services. This transfer stage can deliver components of these services to lunar orbit to support other the LunA-10 architecture as well as loiter near the Moon to provide communication and navigation services themselves. This is extensible to international Moon landings similar to the potential applications to CLPS missions. Other applications in national security include having several orbiting nodes in a constellation with significant antenna hardware. This increases the likelihood of picking up signals from nefarious satellites in cislunar orbits that are not transmitting (non-cooperative) directly back to Earth. The Space Vehicles Directorate at AFRL has these comparable relay communications goals for cislunar space and beyond.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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