Browse Topic: Satellites
This paper solves the problem of resource and energy constraints on orbit computing for LEO satellites. By combining MADDPG reinforcement learning and Lyapunov optimization, the paper proposes a computing framework and implements an adaptive task offloading model for space flight using a multi-agent deep actor critic algorithm, MADDPG. The joint optimization mechanism is implemented by multi-agent dynamic task offloading. Through the transformation from the state with long-term constraints into optimization of the status of queue stability, the load scheduling under threshold energy in accordance with the characteristics of energy constraints was realized by introducing Lyapunov virtual queues into the process of policy evaluation of deep reinforcement learning. The experimental results show that the proposed framework enables a lightweight preliminary calculation, balanced energy consumption to reduce resource allocation, and realizes the stable queues through adaptability of tasks under energy balance conditions, which can provide high-efficiency computing assistance and support for space orbit tasks such as monitoring remote sensing of Earth.
To solve a problem that ignition anomaly can’t be detected in time, based on the thermal equilibrium equation, the space heat flow, heater heating, propellant combustion, and thermal radiation to cryogenic space are considered to build an accurate ignition temperature method for the 10 N thruster by using on-orbit true temperature. Further, considering the error of measuring the thermistor, an envelope model for the 10 N thruster ignition temperature is established. Based on the above, a detection method for the 10 N thruster ignition anomaly of on-orbit satellites is proposed. The accuracy of the method is relatively high, and the absolute error is less than 3 degrees Celsius. An anomaly can be quickly detected when the 10N thruster ignition temperature deviates from the normal trend by 3–5 degrees celsius. The method is applied to a DFH-3 satellite, and the maximum difference of 10 N thruster ignition temperature between the theoretical values calculated by the proposed method and the measured values is only 2.72 degrees celsius. It has been proven that the prediction accuracy of the proposed method is high. It plays an important role in discovering the 10N thruster ignition anomaly in time and ensuring the success of satellite orbit or attitude control.
In this paper, we focus on satellite production lines and design and implement a digital twin simulation and verification system for them. This is to improve manual documentation efficiency and provide sufficient process controllability in the small satellites’ batch production and assembly testing. We built a layered architecture. This allows the system to dynamically interact with AIT data management systems, structured process systems, and equipment data by fusing multi-source data. We also develop functional modules that combine lightweight 3D model visualization, dynamic simulation engines, and hybrid scheduling optimization algorithms. These modules can perform twin simulation, execute processes, intelligently schedule production, manage work reporting, conduct intelligent analysis, trigger anomaly alarms, and perform system management. We also dynamically simulate complex workflows like satellite transfer and automated assembly. These workflows are then verified using 3D virtual scene modeling and physical engines. We use time-series analysis to improve scheduling accuracy and multidimensional dynamic monitoring and hierarchical response to enhance production stability. In practice, the system can provide visualized control over the full process of satellite production. This greatly improves assembly efficiency and process controllability. It can also be an extensible digital way for aerospace manufacturing. The use of hierarchical architecture design and multimodal data fusion can be further applied in the complex equipment intelligent manufacturing.
Sealing systems in space applications must perform reliably under demanding conditions in engineering: cryogenic temperatures, vibration, leakage control, ultra-high vacuum, ionizing radiation, abrasive particulates, and repeated thermal cycling. Each factor strains conventional sealing technologies. In combination, they can rapidly cause failure in systems where margins are unforgiving and maintenance is impossible. As spacecraft architectures evolve toward longer operational lifetimes and broader mission profiles, sealing requirements continue to tighten. Launch vehicles, satellites, and exploration platforms now operate across wider temperature ranges and in contact with more aggressive propellants and media. As a result, both metal seals and engineered polymer alternatives are evaluated-and selected-against increasingly specific, measurable performance criteria.
Space vehicle and satellite development programs are driving demand for new small- and medium-sized satellites across commercial and defense imaging, data collection, and other space-based applications.
The successful launch of the final GPS-III satellite into orbit makes 32 total satellites in the GPS-III constellation, and paves the way for production and launch of GPS-IIIF satellites. Space Systems Command, El Segundo, CA With the successful launch of the 10th Global Positioning System III satellite on April 21 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base, Space Systems Command is celebrating the start of a new era for the world's premier GPS constellation. “This milestone satellite launch completes GPS Block III,” said Erin Carper, Acting Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Satellite Communications and Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) at SSC. “Providing critical military and civil signal accuracy 24/7, GPS continues to underpin global military operations for our warfighters.”
As satellites take on more onboard processing - from Earth imaging to autonomy - spacecraft computing designers are pushing for higher performance under tight thermal and radiation constraints. Here's how suppliers are approaching heat removal, radiation mitigation and production-scale space-grade computing for LEO and beyond.
The future of Moon exploration may be rolling around a non-descript office on the CU Boulder campus. Here, a robot about as wide as a large pizza scoots forward on three wheels. It uses an arm with a claw at one end to pick up a plastic block from the floor, then set it back down.
Researchers discover texts, phone calls, military communication, internal corporate networks all easily eavesdropped on using off-the-shelf equipment. University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA With $800 of off-the-shelf equipment and months' worth of patience, a team of U.S. computer scientists set out to find out how well geostationary satellite communications are encrypted. And what they found was shocking. Close to half of the communications beamed from satellites to the ground that the researchers were able to listen in on were not encrypted. This included sensitive data including cellular text messages, voice calls, as well as sensitive military information, data from internal corporate and bank networks, and the in-flight online activity of airline passengers.
Mercury Systems, Inc. Andover, MA
NEC Corporation Tokyo, Japan
Rocket Lab Corporation Long Beach, CA
With $800 of off-the-shelf equipment and months’ worth of patience, a team of U.S. computer scientists set out to find out how well geostationary satellite communications are encrypted. And what they found was shocking.
The convergence of highly capable edge AI models and advanced commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) edge AI accelerators is reshaping how computation is deployed across defense, aerospace, and commercial platforms. Mission-critical decisions increasingly must be made at the edge, onboard vehicles, satellites, and infrastructure nodes, where latency, connectivity, and power availability are constrained.
Astronomers and amateurs alike know the bigger the telescope, the more powerful the imaging capability. To keep the power but streamline one of the bulkier components, a Penn State-led research team created the first ultrathin, compact metalens telescope capable of imaging faraway objects, including the Moon.
Precise time synchronization is the backbone of today's connected world, keeping telecom networks, data centers, and financial systems running seamlessly. Without accurate timing, our digital infrastructure would quickly fall out of sync. Septentrio designs and manufactures world recognized Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) timing receivers for critical infrastructure and leading industry organizations. The Septentrio mosaic-T timing module delivers nanosecond-level precision for synchronization and is trusted by companies such as Meinberg, VIAVI, and Saab. Built-in AIM+ technology protects against intentional and unintentional GNSS jamming and spoofing, ensuring maximum system uptime even in challenging or hostile conditions.
Originally scheduled for September 2025, Artemis II, NASA’s first crewed mission in the Artemis program is now targeted no later than April 2026 for launch. Taking the crew around the Moon is going to be the agency’s first step toward sustained lunar presence.
Space is becoming increasingly congested due to rising numbers of on-orbit satellites and debris objects. Uncontrolled growth will severely affect future space operations. NASA Ames has developed a novel patent-pending technology known as Space Traffic Management (STM) which provides a robust framework for on-orbit coordination of activities to enhance the safety, stability, and sustainability of operations in the space environment.
NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Program and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, have successfully tested wideband technology that allows spacecraft to communicate with both government and commercial networks for the first time. Launched July 23, 2025, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission, the Polylingual Experimental Terminal (PExT) is demonstrating multilingual wideband terminal technology. Hosted on a satellite from York Space Systems, PExT enhances a spacecraft's communications subsystem, enabling mission controllers to track and exchange data more efficiently across a broad range of networks and frequencies.
NASA has developed an innovative combination of a Magnetometer, low-powered ElectroMagnets, and Resonant Inductive Coupling (MEMRIC) to create and control relative positioning of nano satellites within a cluster. This is a game-changing approach to enable distributed nanosatellite (nanosat) clusters. The focus is on low-cost propulsion, navigation, and power sharing. Each of these functions can share the same basic technology.
Advanced Navigation Sydney, Australia
The U.S. Space Force (USSF) Space Systems Command (SSC) achieved a major milestone during a demonstration event in August, showcasing the Joint Antenna Marketplace (JAM) and successfully transferring the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's (NRL) Transmit/Receive Enterprise (TREx) Service from a research and development project into an SSC operational prototype. During the demonstration, the team demonstrated the use of commercial antennas for real-time contacts between a Space Development Agency's (SDA) satellite operations center and their Tranche 0 satellites using JAM which leveraged the newly integrated TREx system.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has added a micro-vibration test instrument, developed by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), to its satellite testing facilities. NPL is the United Kingdom’s National Measurement Institute, developing and maintaining the national primary measurement standards. The instrument measures vibrations generated by satellite subsystems, to quantify their effects on images and measurements made from space. This facility is the result of five years of collaboration between NPL and ESA.
Moog Inc. East Aurora, NY kgibas@moog.com
Missions to the moon and other planets will require large-scale infrastructure that would benefit from autonomous assembly by robots without on-site human intervention. Modular and reconfigurable structures, such as those built from lattice-based building blocks, are reusable and easy to manufacture. Furthermore, reconfigurable systems have the potential to outperform traditional, fixed infrastructure in applications that require high levels of flexibility in addition to structural strength and rigidity. NASA Ames Research Center has developed a novel and efficient mobile bipedal robot system to construct low-mass, high precision, and largescale infrastructure.
In contemporary society, where Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are utilised extensively, their inherent fragility gives rise to potential hazards with respect to the safety of ship navigation. In order to address this issue, the present study focuses on an ASM signal delay measurement system based on software defined radio peripherals. The system comprises two distinct components: a transmitting end and a receiving end. At the transmitting end, a signal generator, a first time-frequency synchronisation device, and a VHF transmitting antenna are employed to transmit ASM signals comprising dual Barker 13 code training sequences. At the receiving end, signals are received via software-defined radio equipment, a second time-frequency synchronisation device, a computing host, and a VHF receiving antenna. Utilising sliding correlation algorithms enables accurate time delay estimation. The present study leverages the high performance and low cost advantages of the universal software-defined radio peripheral USRP, fully utilises the good autocorrelation of ASM signals, effectively improves the accuracy of signal transmission delay measurement, and provides a reliable technical means to ensure the safety of ship navigation. The practical application of this subject is of significant importance, and there are wide prospects for its promotion and application.
Measuring the volume of harvested material behind the machine can be beneficial for various agricultural operations, such as baling, dropping, material decomposition, cultivation, and seeding. This paper aims to investigate and determine the volume of material for use in various agricultural operations. This proposed methodology can help to predict the amount of residue available in the field, assess field readiness for the next production cycle, measure residue distribution, determine hay readiness for baling, and evaluate the quantity of hay present in the field, among other applications which would benefit the customer. Efficient post-harvest residue management is essential for sustainable agriculture. This paper presents an Automated Offboard System that leverages Remote Sensing, IoT, Image Processing, and Machine Learning/Deep Learning (ML/DL) to measure the volume of harvested material in real-time. The system integrates onboard cameras and satellite imagery to analyze the field and top layers of residue, correlating this data with elevation maps to compute harvested material volume. This innovation supports operations such as baling, residue decomposition time and thereby contributing to land preparation. This technique offers benefits like reduced operational costs, labor independence, and enhanced soil nutrient planning.
NASA has developed an innovative combination of a Magnetometer, low-powered ElectroMagnets, and Resonant Inductive Coupling (MEMRIC) to create and control relative positioning of nano satellites within a cluster. This is a game-changing approach to enable distributed nanosatellite (nanosat) clusters. The focus is on low-cost propulsion, navigation, and power sharing. Each of these functions can share the same basic technology.
The success of off-road missions for ground vehicles depends heavily on terrain traversability, which in turn requires a thorough understanding of soil characteristics a key component being soil moisture content. When large areas need to be analyzed, satellite imagery is often used, although this approach typically reduces the spatial resolution. This decrease of spatial resolution creates what are known as mixed pixels, when two or more classes or features are in a single pixel’s area, which can lead to noisier data and lower accuracy models. This paper investigates using linear spectral unmixing as a way to help clean / mitigate noisy data to yield better predictive models. Hyperspectral remote sensing from the Hyperion satellite platform and ground truth from the International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN) are used for the dataset. This study found that soil moisture content prediction, comparing the mixed multilayer perceptron (MLP) model with an unmixing approach revealed a 10–30% change in RMSE and MAE across NDVI ranges incremented by 0.1. Hence, this study demonstrates the potential use of spectral unmixing as a methodology to help enhance predictive models for terrain properties when using (lower spatial resolution / more noisy) remotely sensed datasets.
After 3D printing a habitat designed for Mars and working with NASA on print material made from synthetic Moon dust, AI SpaceFactory Inc. has commercialized two separate 3D printers. The Secaucus, NJ-based company’s latest offering, Starforge, is a large-capacity 3D printer that uses innovative print material inspired by SpaceFactory’s work with NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida under an Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity agreement.
Solar cells account for approximately six percent of the electricity used on Earth; however, in space, they play a significantly larger role, with nearly all satellites relying on advanced solar cells for their power. That’s why Georgia Tech researchers will soon be sending 18 photovoltaic cells to the International Space Station (ISS) for a study of how space conditions affect the devices’ operation over time.
SuperSharp University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Advanced motion control technologies are essential to modern aerospace design, supporting a wide range of safety-critical and comfort-driven applications. In aerospace, motion control components such as gas springs, actuators, and dampers are integral to nearly every commercial aircraft, rocket, satellite, and space vehicle. These critical elements support flight safety and transport functions, from the dependable deployment of landing gear and cargo doors to the smooth, ergonomic operation of seating for pilots and passengers.
In a groundbreaking achievement, the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) earlier this year became the first unit to successfully use the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) function of the Army/Navy Portable Radio Communications (AN/PRC) 158 and 162 radios for conventional rotary wing operations. The trailblazing accomplishment occurred as the brigade continued its mission of providing support to ground forces, April 9, 2025. The MUOS function, of the AN/PRC-158 and 162 radios, operates by transmitting ultra-high frequency radio waves through a constellation of satellites to create a steady communications network. MUOS is a component of a bigger Integrated Tactical Network (ITN).
Despite all the technological evolution in navigation, waters just off coastal shores around the globe have remained a black box. That is, until researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and Oregon State University developed a new technology that uses satellites in space to map out these tricky areas.
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