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December 2000
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SpaceDev Given Go-Ahead on NASA CHIPSat Mission; NASA Office of Space Science Approval Paves the Way for Early 2002 Launch Date
The world's first publicly traded commercial space exploration and development company, announced today that their $5 million CHIPSat spacecraft project has been officially confirmed by NASA Headquarters.
CHIPSat, the first University Explorer mission funded by the NASA Explorers Office is a low-earth orbiting science mission managed by the University of California Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory (http://ssl.berkeley.edu). SpaceDev is under contract to design and build the spacecraft, integrate the science payload, integrate the flight system to the launch vehicle, and operate the CHIPSat Observatory for one year. CHIPSat (www.spacedev.com/missions/chipsat.htm) will be launched as a secondary payload on a Boeing Delta-II GPS replacement launch mission planned for early 2002.
The CHIPSat team is currently testing and validating key components and subsystems developed by SpaceDev for the project. Testing has also begun with an innovative satellite command and control architecture using standard commercial network protocols. This architecture, combined with SpaceDev's new HPX-21 Single Board MPC750 Flight Computer and MST-21 S-Band Transponder, allows the team to test critical functionality among the spacecraft and instrument processors over the Internet. This includes the CHIPS science payload being developed in Virginia and at UC Berkeley, the Attitude Control & Determination System, and the Command & Data Handling Subsystem.
Jeff Janicik, SpaceDev's CHIPSat Program Manager commented, "Our team did an outstanding job demonstrating the capability and elegant simplicity of our spacecraft design to NASA -- while at the same time keeping up with their day-to-day design and development tasks, so as to maintain our delivery schedule."
For more information:
www.spacedev.com/missions/chipsat.htm
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