NASA's Psyche mission to test Deep Space Optical Comms

This week NASA is slated to launch its Psyche asteroid mission on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The spacecraft will visit Psyche, which orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter, to learn how Earth and other rocky planets formed. It is the first mission to an asteroid with substantial amounts of metal, as previous missions have explored asteroids made mostly of rock or ice. 

The mission will also host NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment, which will test the ability of lasers to transmit data at higher rates than traditional radio communications beyond the Moon. During the first two years of Psyche's journey to its namesake asteroid, DSOC will test high-bandwidth optical communications to Earth. The experiment will not be relaying Psyche mission data.

The near-infrared transceiver’s 22-centimeter aperture telescope is mounted on an isolation-and-pointing assembly that stabilizes the optics and isolates it from spacecraft vibrations. 

The data sent back by the DSOC transceiver on Psyche will be collected by the 200-inch (5.1-meter) Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, using a sensitive superconducting nanowire photon-counting receiver to demonstrate high-rate data transfer.

Signals sent back to the spacecraft will be emitted by a high-power near-infrared laser transmitter at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Table Mountain facility near Wrightwood, California.

The key objectives of the experiment are to demonstrate:

• that flight laser transceiver and ground systems are able to lock onto each other’s laser signals during DSOC’s calibration and commissioning phase.
• that optical transmissions are feasible at a distance of 1 astronomical unit (equal to the distance from the sun to the Earth ~ 150 million km)
• that the system can operate for a duration of 2 years.

https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/deep-space-optical-communications-dsoc/

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NASA awards contracts for space communications

NASA awarded contracts to two companies – Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) USA of Denver and SpaceLink Corporation of McLean, Virginia – to develop capability studies to explore and demonstrate communications and navigation services in support of Artemis missions to the Moon.

The awards, under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships-2 (NextSTEP-2) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) Appendix O, are firm fixed-price milestone-based contracts in the amounts of $161,638 for KSAT and $189,881 for SpaceLink Corporation.

The studies will involve direct-to-Earth and lunar space relay communications and navigation services that would enhance telemetry, tracking, and commanding services for orbital and sub-orbital missions at the Moon through relay of critical data between spacecraft and ground stations.

"All missions need communications and navigation services to send data back to Earth. These capability studies and demonstrations will highlight networking efficiencies and inform future planning for NASA missions," said Kathy Lueders, associate administrator for NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate.

https://www.nasa.gov/nextstep

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NASA awards $622.5M contract for Cybersecurity and Enterprise

NASA has awarded the Cybersecurity and Privacy Enterprise Solutions and Services (CyPrESS) contract to Booz Allen Hamilton of McLean, Virginia.

CyPrESS is a cost plus award fee core and hybrid indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a total potential value of $622.5 million. The period of performance includes a base period that begins May 31, 2022, and runs through Sept. 30, 2023, as well as four option periods that run through Sept. 30, 2030.

Under the terms of the contract, Booz Allen Hamilton will provide cybersecurity and privacy enterprise solutions and services, as well as related services, for the agency's Office of Chief Information Office. The CyPrESS contract is the first enterprise cybersecurity and privacy services contract and consolidates cybersecurity and privacy work from various center and enterprise information technology contracts.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-awards-contract-for-cybersecurity-privacy-enterprise-solutions

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NASA picks Nokia to supply 4G network for the Moon

NASA has selected Nokia to deploy the first LTE/4G communications system on the lunar surface.

Nokia’s lunar network consists of an LTE Base Station with integrated Evolved Packet Core (EPC) functionalities, LTE User Equipment, RF antennas and high-reliability operations and maintenance (O&M) control software. The solution has been specially designed to withstand the harsh conditions of the launch and lunar landing, and to operate in the extreme conditions of space. The fully integrated cellular network meets very stringent size, weight and power constraints of space payloads in an extremely compact form factor.

Nokia is partnering with Intuitive Machines for this mission to integrate this groundbreaking network into their lunar lander and deliver it to the lunar surface. The network will self-configure upon deployment and establish the first LTE communications system on the Moon.  

Marcus Weldon, Chief Technology Officer at Nokia and Nokia Bell Labs President, said: "Leveraging our rich and successful history in space technologies, from pioneering satellite communication to discovering the cosmic microwave background radiation produced by the Big Bang, we are now building the first ever cellular communications network on the Moon. Reliable, resilient and high-capacity communications networks will be key to supporting sustainable human presence on the lunar surface. By building the first high performance wireless network solution on the Moon, Nokia Bell Labs is once again planting the flag for pioneering innovation beyond the conventional limits.”

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