With very close professional ties to MIT, the principals of Espace arepart of the HETE-2 spacecraft -- a small satellite, measuring roughly a meter high by half a meter in diameter. HETE-2 retains most of the original HETE-1 design, with significant modifications made primarily to the power system. It was developed and constructed by essentially the same MIT team that completed HETE-1, relying in part on key spacecraft design and development consultants. The spacecraft consists of a spacecraft bus, in which the satellite control hardware and the spacecraft computers reside, and the science payload, which point out one end of the spacecraft. In the drawing above, the four solar panels (which are stowed, parallel to the spacecraft, for launch) are connected at the bottom of the spacecraft bus, and the science instruments point out the top. On orbit, the science instruments will always be pointing away from the sun, and the deployed solar panels will be directed toward the sun.
