Affordable Vehicle Avionics (AVA)

Closeout Summary: Advanced Vehicle Avionics (AVA) targeted the development of a low cost, small platform avionics system that would provide nano-launch providers a viable and economic solution to flight guidance, navigation, and control. The AVA technology enables commercial small payload launch providers to reduce the cost of delivering payloads to Low Earth Orbit on a trajectory and schedule that is optimized to their needs. The project built three flight units which have successfully passed flight certification requirements for environment and acceptance testing. In September 2018 one of the units flew on SL-11, and another unit was flown as part of the ADEPT project on SL-12. The SL-11 flight demonstrated AVA successfully achieved primary flight-test objective for roll-axis closed loop control. Data synchronization challenges prevented AVA from achieving the secondary flight objective for three-axis attitude control. The AVA project was transferred to the Flight Opportunities Program (FOP) under the Announcement of Collaborative Opportunity (ACO) with UP Aerospace which will focus on control the UP Aerospace “Spyder” orbital launch vehicle.