Plug-and-Play Microsatellites

“Marc Smotherman, ATA’s task manager for the STAT’s chamber data acquisition and control system, said, “One of the requirements for the STAT facility was to install a government-furnished microsatellite in the STAT chamber during final system tests. “The satellite earmarked for this effort became unavailable. The Air Force approached ATA for a solution. An ATA team composed of John Prebola, Carrie McInturff (ATA’s STAT project engineer and lead for the facility’s distributed mission operation system) and I developed requirements for the microsatellite.” The main requirements were that all the microsatellite components had flown in space and that the instrumentation be included with the microsatellite so that it could measure certain environmental parameters it would encounter in the STAT chamber. “Carrie and I developed a software and hardware design for the microsatellite that includes not only the microsatellite design,” Smotherman said, “but design of ground support systems to monitor the status of the microsatellite in the STAT chamber.” The design drawings for the microsatellite and ground support hardware were given to Roger Johnson, an ATA instrumentation technician expert.” More