Terran Orbital Corporation, a global leader in satellite solutions, primarily serving the United States aerospace and defense industry, announced the successful integration of six Terran Orbital designed and built satellites aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket prior to the Transporter-5 launch. The 57-minute launch window opens today, Wednesday, May 25 at 2:27 p.m. ET. Click here to view the launch. Satellite descriptions below.
NASA CubeSat Proximity Operations Demonstration (CPOD)
The CPOD project is being led by Terran Orbital with funding from NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology Program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. The technology demonstration mission will validate the technologies needed to support rendezvous, proximity operations, docking (RPOD), servicing, and formation flight by utilizing a pair of identical 3-unit (3U) CubeSats – leveraging their inherently lower vehicle and launch costs.
NASA Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator 3 (PTD-3)
PTD-3 is a 6-unit (6U) CubeSat built and integrated by Terran Orbital to host and support launch and on-orbit operations of the TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) payload funded by NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program and developed by MIT Lincoln Laboratory (MIT LL). The TBIRD mission is the second mission in the PTD series funded by the Small Spacecraft Technology program in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. The mission will demonstrate a space-to-ground data transfer capability at orders of magnitude faster than previously demonstrated technologies. This technology could open doors to large volume data communications and data accessibility for advanced space exploration— delivering multiple terabytes of data per day to a single ground station.
Fleet Space CENTAURI-5
The CENTAURI-5 spacecraft is part of a constellation commissioned by Fleet Space Technologies to deliver global connectivity solutions specifically designed for the energy, exploration, and resource industries. Tyvak International, a Terran Orbital Corporation, designed and developed the spacecraft. Fleet Space is providing the payload that consists of the world’s first 3D printed all-metal patch antenna array combined with Digital Beamforming in S-Band frequency.