The United States Air Force announced today that STPSat-1 has completed on-orbit checkout activities and is moving into the normal operations phase of the mission. All subsystems are performing nominally and both experiments are successfully generating science data. STPSat’s planned mission life is 1 year after entry into normal operations.
Tiger Innovations was proud to support the STPSat-1 team through launch and early operations. Tiger personnel provided on-site support at the launch base in Cape Canaveral, FL as well as the ground control station at Kirtland AFB.
Under contract from AeroAstro, Tiger Innovations designed, integrated, and tested the STPSat-1 Integrated Electronics Module, which provides command and data handling capability as well as power control functions to the STPSat-1 spacecraft. In addition to the IEM flight hardware, Tiger Innovations delivered two complete EGSE racks to provide command and telemetry capability in support of spacecraft integration and test activities. Tiger Innovations’ proprietary StreamLINK ground software was used to command and communicate with the SV throughout the I&T process.
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.