Realizing Responsive Space

For the past four decades, potential space users have been trying to simplify getting their missions to space through shorter schedules and reduced costs. In the late 1990s, the issue became twofold: first, having reliable, low-cost access to space, And second, hosting missions on satellites that can be produced quickly and inexpensively while being flexible enough to support a variety of missions. It has taken four waves of progress to let space users realize what was once called ‘responsive space.’

Wave One – Simplifying Satellite Interfaces

In the early 2000s, the US Department of Defense (DoD) embarked on the Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) concept, which was aimed at providing quick-response tactical space-based capabilities. This effort, which included civil and national defense organizations, originally focused on connectivity: standardized interfaces and flexible assembly. It evolved into a modular open system architecture (MOSA) – again focusing on interfaces so that capabilities (through the reuse of some modules and the development of new ones) could be flexibly combined. Unfortunately, the US national security community was not successful in expanding this interface-based concept into ‘responsive’ satellite production – but they were successful in developing the concepts and tools that enable a way to abstract payloads (which need to be flexible) from the rest of the satellite.

Wave Two – Simplifying Satellite Manufacturing

The commercial space industry took a different approach to satellite responsiveness, which has been more successful but less flexible. Instead of focusing on a modular architecture that would allow a wide variety of satellite missions, companies such as OneWeb and SpaceX have focused on the mass production of a single type of satellite (communications in both cases). This drove down costs and reduced the manufacturing time for a satellite but didn’t address a customer’s need to incorporate new capabilities. However, it provided an opportunity for low-cost, quick-to-produce satellite buses. 

Wave Three – Simplifying Satellite Launch

Abstracting the payload from a standard commodity bus is only half the solution. Luckily, at the same time, the commercial space industry was solving the cost and schedule impacts of launch. Until recently, launches were infrequent due to the ‘build one at a time’ nature of launch vehicle production and costly due to component cost and the need to ‘throw it away’ after a single launch. The space shuttle was designed to address these problems, but technical complications and refurbishment costs made it a more expensive and less frequent flyer than planned. It took the commercialization of launch – with a focus on significant reusability and scale of operations – to solve these problems and provide (relatively) inexpensive, reliable, and frequent launches to support responsive satellites.

Wave Four – Simplifying Satellite Software

On top of this was a problem that was not previously addressed in the quest for responsiveness – the question of how satellite flight software could be simplified to allow the quick and low-cost integration of new capabilities into existing satellite infrastructure. Until recently, flight software has been difficult to write and has needed extensive testing to ensure satellite reliability and safety. This changed with Microsoft's development of the Azure Space platform, which provides developers with a secure hosting platform and application kit for creating, deploying, and operating applications in orbit. This can significantly reduce the time and effort needed to deploy a mission to space by using existing on-orbit assets - providing safe access to flight capabilities to support ‘virtual missions’ through zero-trust principled frameworks.

"The ability to deploy missions to space in a cost-effective way with short lead-times will truly make space ‘simple."

Bringing It All Together – Simplifying Space

Combined, these four waves of ‘responsive space’ have created an environment where customers of all types can deploy missions to space with reasonable costs and timelines – like information users being able to deploy their applications to the cloud. Companies such as Loft Orbital have evolved the standardized interface approaches of ORS to provide a layer that abstracts customer payloads from the rest of the satellite, simplifying payload integration to commodity buses. This allows the use of mass-produced satellite buses that provide both low cost and short manufacturing time, enabling space infrastructure providers such as Loft to have buses ‘on the shelf’ for quick mission deployment. Launch services such as SpaceX's Transporter series provide frequent, low-cost access to space. This responsiveness is made greater with flight software development environments that further decrease the cost and time to get a mission to orbit by providing a safe and secure way to use existing on-orbit infrastructure (sensor and computation capabilities) to support new missions.

Summary

Flexible interfaces, commodity satellite buses and launches, and new ways to deploy flight software are finally allowing customers of all types (large and small, commercial and government) to realize the goal of ‘responsive space.’ The ability to deploy missions to space in a cost-effective way with short lead times will truly make space ‘simple.’