Description: NOVI’s offering is aimed at providing NASA with a modular and easily reconfigurable spacecraft bus that uses a customizable chassis structure in conjunction with a common set of avionics components and sub-systems for rapid and flexible deployment of payloads / constellations. The proposed approach not only offers new capabilities, timelines and cost paradigms for fielding CubeSat and ESPA-class spacecraft for a wide variety of mission needs and requirements, but also supports existing efforts to create more readily available COTS-based state-of-the-art products that enable modular, plug-and-play functionality. As part of the proposed Phase I effort, NOVI will: Demonstrate the flexibility and utility of the overall approach by focusing on a complicated and “distributed” payload for in-orbit capture and servicing, and use it to complete the detailed design of a “semi-customized” spacecraft tailored for this use-case; Explore the use of AM to incorporate a high delta-V propulsion system with conformal tanks and propellant feed system elements, as well as an AM-based launch adapter and deployment system; and Develop and trade workflow models for a longer-term manufacturing cell and “production-line” that combines flexible AM structure with an inventory of standardized, batch-sourced components to realize modular, swappable architectures that can rapidly be tailored for novel applications (without the need for significant modifications to existing systems and platforms).

Benefits: NOVI’s offerings are part of a broader set of capabilities to realize a new generation of rapidly-reconfigurable small-sats that combine batch-sourced COTS components with highly-integrated AM-based cellular manufacturing to offer a low-cost and efficient approach for rapid constellation deployment and replenishment. The solutions will support multiple NASA initiatives ranging from LEO-based operations to deep space exploration and habitation, with direct applications supporting SMD, STMD and the Earth Science and Heliophysics divisions.

NOVI’s modular, batch-fabricated small-sats are also targeted towards an emerging class of commercial players aiming to develop and operate LEO constellations for earth observation, broadband connectivity, IoT, weather monitoring, AIS, space-based data storage, and a host of other use-cases (representing a global small-sat market that is growing at a 20% CAGR to reach $5.3B by 2021).