Satellite Bus Range Expanded by NanoAvionics
NanoAvionics has expanded its satellite bus range by adding two microsatellite buses, the MP42H and the MP42D, to its product line based on its flagship MP42 bus. Capable of hosting customer payloads of up to 145 kg (≈320 pounds) and a total satellite mass of up to 220 kg (≈485 pounds), the company has now one of the widest ranges of commercially available modular microsatellite buses in the industry.
"With our newly extended range, based on our flight proven MP42 bus, and together with our mission operations and launch brokering, we are offering the perfect solution to allow these companies to get their operational satellites into orbit quickly, safely and cost-effectively."
Vytens J. Buzas, founder and CEO of NanoAvionics.
All MP42 microsats are equipped with NanoAvionics' next generation payload controllers. The controller allows customers to build their own software blocks, similar to app developers creating apps. The microsats also provide intersatellite links for both LEO-LEO and LEO-GEO, which ensures uninterrupted real time communications. For communications missions, all MP42 buses provide customers with various options to tailor the satellites for their bandwidth and constellation coverage needs. The successful heritage mission for this microsat range, a prototype of the MP42, flew into orbit aboard a Falcon F9 in April this year and has delivered a 4k selfie video on the Earth’s background during its initial operations phase.
"More and more customers require sophisticated missions and applications which in return demand flexible buses designed and equipped to host their larger payloads while keeping cost low," said Vytens J. Buzas, founder and CEO of NanoAvionics. "With our newly extended range, based on our flight proven MP42 bus, and together with our mission operations and launch brokering, we are offering the perfect solution to allow these companies to get their operational satellites into orbit quickly, safely and cost-effectively.
“The extension is also the logical next step of our strategic decision to expand into the microsatellite market that was based on reduced costs in the launcher segment, allowing heavier payloads as a result of that. A development that we are seeing across the whole industry.”
The use for advanced missions and applications is a result of their modular design and being optimized to offer flexible envelopes to host customer payloads of up to 145 kg and a total satellite mass of up to 220 kg. Their design significantly reduces mechanical constraints for payload integration. The expanded satellite bus range gives customers more freedom for the shape and volume of their payloads, without interfering with the satellite frame. It also lowers their cost for development and payload integration and improves lead times and reliability.
As with all of NanoAvionics’s buses, overall cost and lead times are further lowered by the standardized design that keeps 80 percent of the satellite’s architecture for any customer mission. It enables NanoAvionics to manufacture parts in larger quantities in advance. And like its nanosatellite range, all microsatellite buses are part of an end-to-end mission infrastructure for single missions as well as for constellations, including launch and logistics, ground station network and mission operations.
Equipped with NanoAvionics’s optional EPSS (enabling propulsion system for small satellites) these satellites can perform high-impulse maneuvers including orbit maintenance, precision flight in formations, orbit synchronization, atmospheric drag compensation and in certain cases even orbital deployment. This results in extended satellite orbital lifetime which significantly reduces cost for replacing constellation satellites.
(Image provided with NanoAvionics news release)