Mission design and operations of a constellation of small satellites for remote sensing

The Hawaii Space Flight Laboratory (HSFL) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa is developing the capabilities to design, build, and operate constellations of small satellites than can be tailored to efficiently execute a variety of remote sensing missions. With the Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Office, HSFL is developing the Super Strypi launch vehicle that on its initial mission in 2013 will launch the HSFL 55-kg HawaiiSat-1 into a near polar orbit, providing the first deployment of these technologies. This satellite will be carrying a miniature hyperspectral thermal imager developed by the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP). HSFL has also developed a method to efficiently deploy a constellation of small satellites using a minimal number of launch vehicles. Under a three-year NASA grant, HSFL is developing a Comprehensive Open-architecture Space Mission Operations System (COSMOS) to support these types of missions. COSMOS is being designed as a System of Systems (SoS) software integrator, tying together existing elements from different technological domains. This system should be easily adaptable to new architectures and easily scalable. It will be provided as Open Source to qualified users, so will be adoptable by even universities with very restricted budgets. In this paper we present the use of COSMOS as a System of Systems integrator for satellite constellations of up to 100 satellites and numerous ground stations and/or contact nodes, including a fully automated “lights out” satellite contact capability.