SBIR-STTR Award

SpaceWorks will leverage our 20 years of company experience in hypersonic vehicle development, reentry capsule production & flight testing, trajectory and aerodynamics computation modeling of high-fidelity aerospace systems, and novel avionics system / software development to evaluate, select, and develop position sensing solutions for endoatmospheric flight. In Phase I, SpaceWorks proposes to perform an extensive Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) and conduct a limited number of feasibility experiments The resultant conceptual designs will include a detailed system CONOPs, functional diagrams, and analysis to verify the verify the candidate system can achieve the desired accuracy over a range of altitudes and high speed conditions.

Benefit:
The SpaceWorks GPS alternative solution will be optimized to maintain target accuracy goals over a range of flight conditions, including altitude and speed. The solution will also utilize radiation-hardened electronics to survive exo-atmospheric conditions. This robust solution will provide support for military operations in GPS denied environments which will greatly help the war fighter defeat a peer enemy. Commercially, SpaceWorks solution for a GPS alternative reentry can be economically integrated into non-military reentry devices and on-orbit satellites. SpaceWorks has extensive experience developing reentry capsules, and currently uses GPS solutions for all of our Hypersonic and Reentry vehicles. The use of GPS, although accurate and effective, implements extensive measures to mitigate for the plasma sheathing experienced during reentry. An alternative to GPS solution will improve the accuracy of Reentry of SpaceWorks RED devices and will have comparable performance ripples across the commercial reentry device market.

Keywords:
RED-25, RED-25, atomic magnetometer, RED-Data, X-60, GPS denied environment, re-entry, GPS-aided INS, LIDAR

In Phase I, SpaceWorks Enterprises, Inc. conducted an extensive Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) and selected a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)-aided INS solution to meet the Navy SSPs requirements for a GPS alternative for reentry (see the Phase I Final Report for an overview of this solution). The proposed MachSAR system was able to improve position and velocity prediction accuracy by 100x compared to an Inertial Navigation System (INS)-only Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) system for a 15-minute boost glide reentry vehicle trajectory that reached speeds of Mach 12. In Phase II, SpaceWorks with subcontractor Aloft Sensing, will refine the MachSAR navigation model with complete and refined requirement inputs from the Navy Strategic Systems Program (SSP), update the design for vehicle-specific integration while optimizing on Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP), and advance the MachSAR design for the Navys vehicle of interest to critical design level. SpaceWorks will also manufacture representative system components into a scaled prototype architecture of the MachSAR and conduct checkout, laboratory, and ground testing to prepare the prototype for flight test. Finally, SpaceWorks will advance the MachSAR prototype to Technology Readiness Level (TRL)-5 through high-speed real-world testing on a Phoenix Air Gulfstream at 400 knots over various ground and sea terrains. To advance the MachSAR design, SpaceWorks will leverage our 20 years of company experience in hypersonic vehicle development, reentry capsule production & flight testing, trajectory and aerodynamics computation modeling of high-fidelity aerospace systems, and novel avionics system / software development. SpaceWorks has experience analyzing various high-speed weapon and Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) systems for several Department of Defense (DoD) contractors, and maintains a cleared facility capable of processing classified information. Recent reentry and hypersonic flight vehicle hardware development efforts include our flagship program, the Generation Orbit X-60 hypersonic flight test vehicle and high-altitude testing of our Low Earth Orbit (LEO) payload return reentry devices (RED Capsules).

Benefit:
SpaceWorks' MachSAR system is an alternative to GPS for reentry that can function in endo and exoatmospheric environments maintaining accuracies of 20 feet at altitudes from sea level to 400,000 feet, and at speeds greater than Mach 4. The solution will utilize radiation-hardened electronics to survive exo-atmospheric conditions. This robust solution will provide support for military operations in GPS denied environments which will greatly help the war fighter defeat a peer enemy. Commercially, SpaceWorks alternative solution for GPS reentry can be economically integrated into non-military reentry devices and on-orbit satellites. SpaceWorks has extensive experience developing reentry capsules, and currently uses GPS solutions for all of our Hypersonic and Reentry vehicles. The use of GPS, although accurate and effective, implements extensive measures to mitigate for the plasma sheathing experienced during reentry. An alternative to GPS solution will improve the accuracy of reentry for SpaceWorks RED devices and will have comparable performance ripples across the commercial reentry device market. The navigation technologies utilized on the proposed effort are beneficial for applications across a variety of domains and for deployment on a range of vehicle platforms. The domains and platforms include Aircraft, Self-Driving Vehicles, Drone Navigation, Unmanned Underwater Vehicles, Planetary Rovers, and Launch Vehicles.

Keywords:
SAR, synthetic aperture radar, GPS-denied, MachSAR, Navigation, Inertial navigation, re-entry