Starling Mission Launch Contract Secured by Rocket Lab
NASA has awarded a launch contract to Rocket Lab for the Starling mission, a multi-CubeSat mission to test and demonstrate autonomous swarm technologies, as well as automated space traffic management for groups of spacecraft in low-Earth orbit.
“Starling has the potential to revolutionize the way science is done in orbit and we’re immensely proud to make that possible.”
Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck.
The four Starling small satellites have been manifested on an Electron commercial rideshare mission scheduled for lift-off from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand in Q3 this year. Rocket Lab will deliver the satellites to space within three months of the contract signing.
Starling Mission will test "Swarm" Satellite Concepts
The Starling mission is designed to test technologies to enable future “swarm” missions. Spacecraft swarms refer to multiple spacecraft autonomously coordinating their activities to achieve certain goals. Starling will explore technologies for in-space network communications, onboard relative navigation between spacecraft, autonomous maneuver planning and execution, and distributed science autonomy.
According to NASA, autonomy ensures that a mission continues to perform through periods when communications with a spacecraft from the ground is temporarily unavailable because of distance or location. Spacecraft swarms operating at great distances from the Earth must act more autonomously due to the delays in time communicating with Earth ground stations.
Clustering satellites into a swarm requires planning and executing multiple maneuvers for each spacecraft. Managing these operations from the ground becomes impractical as the size of the swarm grows or the time delay in communicating with the spacecraft increases. The Starling mission will test technologies that traditionally run ground-oriented operations but are now shifted to operate onboard the spacecraft.
“Electron has been delivering rapid and reliable access to orbit for NASA since 2018 and we’re delighted to continue that strong heritage with the Starling mission,” said Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck. “Starling has the potential to revolutionize the way science is done in orbit and we’re immensely proud to make that possible.”
NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology program within the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate manages the Starling project. The program is based at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. Starling joins a growing list of NASA missions launched by Rocket Lab since 2018, including the ELaNa-19 educational CubeSat program, the CAPSTONE mission to the Moon, and two dedicated Electron launches for the NASA TROPICS mission.
(Source: Rocket Lab news release. Images provided by NASA and from file)