One of the most dynamic changes for the spacecraft industry in the past ten years is the Educational Launch of NanoSatellites (ELaNa) program that has been created by NASA. This program has allowed tens of educational spacecraft to be able to reach orbit and bring in critically needed data to scientists. During the recent CubeSat workshop, NASA announced that for the first time, there were more launch opportunities than available spacecraft. In the same presentation, they announced the next round of ELaNa launch opportunities for CubeSats. These satellites are designed to meet the standard California Polytechnic State University PPOD launcher specifications. Another major boost of excitement was the announcement that ELaNa was now going to begin accepting 6U CubeSat proposals. There is a great deal of belief that the addition of these larger 6U (10 cm * 20 cm * 30 cm) spacecraft will radically change missions that CubeSats can perform. These new missions are the cornerstone of educational institutions being able to perform much of the needed research for current and future NASA missions. The way to truly advance this activity is to provide satellite technologies that can be easily integrated into different satellites in a truly Plug-and-Play fashion. SPA-compatible attitude determination and control solutions will put NASA well on its way in fulfilling its commitment to space exploration.
Many satellite subsystem providers are looking for components that allow the buyer to rapidly assemble a spacecraft to carry a payload. The recent trends in spacecraft development are towards components that are low-cost, low-power, and also ones that require the least amount of work in communications interfacing. As a technology that meets all of these needs, the Space-Plug-and-play Architecture (SPA) is the future. MAI ADACS technologies are distributed all across the world by MAI partners, some of which include ISIS, ATI-Space, Pumpkin Inc., and others. It is highly likely that most of these subsystem providers will soon gravitate towards SPA as the communications interface protocol of their choice. Spacecraft developers who are interested in reducing development and interfacing time by orders of magnitude will therefore benefit immensely from ADACS technologies.
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