Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft (NG-21) delivered a new batch of Voyager customer experiments and technologies to the International Space Station (ISS). This launch marked 60 launches to date carrying Voyager customer payloads to orbit.
Voyager has proudly brought over 1,300 customer payloads (and counting) to the ISS across 60 launches, leading on-orbit operations and coordination between global customers, NASA, and the astronaut crew on board. At Voyager, each day that we support customer missions on orbit is a preparation day for when our commercial space station, Starlab, is on orbit. Together with our Starlab joint venture partners from Airbus, MDA Space, and Mitsubishi Space, we have unmatched commercial spaceflight manufacturing and payload operations heritage, laying the groundwork for Starlab to be the orbital laboratory of choice as the ISS-era nears its end.
This week we have a diverse set of customer payloads that are now on Station including cubesats and externally hosted technology development payloads. Read more about each below:
- DORA (3U): The DORA cubesat will test a sensitive solid state optical receiver for use in future high speed laser links. During idle times, a guest radio astronomy payload will survey use of the radio spectrum below 200MHz. The satellite has been built by students at Arizona State University as an educational project and will be open to use by radio amateurs.
- CySat-1 (3U): The CySat cubesat from Iowa State University will carry a radiometer on board that can measure the Earth’s soil moisture. It will be used as a technology demonstrator to test equipment for future satellite missions.
- Onboard Programmable Technology for Image Compression and Analysis (OPTICA): Developed by Hyspeed Computing, the OPTICA project will be hosted on Voyager’s External Platform on the ISS. This payload will demonstrate real-time streaming of ultra-high-resolution imagery from space down to Earth, as well as real-time analysis of the data on the ground, using advances in both data compression and data analysis.
- Evaluation of NewSpace Component Operation in a Relevant Environment (ENCORE): Developed by Innovative Signal Analysis and hosted on our External Platform, the ENCORE project’s goal is to operate commercial-grade electronic components in the space environment, specifically radio frequency components.
We look forward to working closely with our customers as the payloads arrive at ISS and operations begin.