Tiger Innovations was subcontracted on the STPSat-1 space vehicle. AeroAstro, the prime contractor for STPSat-1, gave Tiger Innovations personnel primary responsibility for the avionics design. STPSat-1 launched on March 8th, 2007 and is currently operating nominally on-orbit. Tiger Innovations, designed and developed the bus architecture, most of the avionics hardware (including the entire C&DH system), and electrical (digital) GSE for this program. Additionally we designed, developed, and tested all of the FPGAs for the electronics built by AeroAstro.
In addition to this design work, Tiger Innovations was integral to a comprehensive power system simulation and a number of trade studies. We helped implement policies and procedures related to the production of the vehicle, as well as assisting in the harness development and general configuration management of the flight hardware builds. As lead of the avionics section, was responsible for program management activities such as schedule and resource allocation, as they related to the avionics subsystem.
Tiger Innovations personnel served a primary role in the box-level environmental testing (vibration and thermal cycling) of the avionics modules, and performing all of the electrical integration of the bus components. We also performed the bus electrical integration with the payloads. Tiger personnel developed scripts for StreamLINK to automate much of the box-level and bus level testing including the system level comprehensive performance test and provided I&T support through space vehicle environmental testing and launch site activities.
About STPSat-1:
STPSat-1 was built by AeroAstro Inc. for the USAF Space Test Program. The primary experiment, Spatial Heterodyne Imager for Mesospheric Radicals (SHIMMER), is a high-resolution ultraviolet spectrometer based on the optical technique known as Spatial Heterodyne Spectroscopy (SHS). SHS facilitates the design of low mass, low power, high throughput spectrometers for space-based remote sensing. The secondary experiment, the Computerized Ionospheric Tomography Receiver in Space (CITRIS), will investigate irregularities that affect propagation of satellite-to-ground links for GPS and communications.