TETHERS UNLIMITED, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: SB161-007

Description

The Constructable Platform effort will define a modular, reconfigurable, and expandable architecture for a platform in GEO to provide persistent support infrastructure for multiple, diverse payloads. The platforms reusability will enable the infrastructure cost to be amortized over multiple payloads, providing reductions in mission cost as well as reducing schedule and risk for fielding a new payload.The platform architecture will integrate scalable and fault-tolerant architectures for key payload utilities such as power distribution and communications, and leverage emerging in-space manufacturing capabilities to enable compact modules compatible with the POD System to construct large, high-performance support structures and utilities.The Phase I effort will identify a set of candidate payloads, use these payloads to define the requirements for the modular platform, and develop methods for meeting service requirements for each of multiple payloads simultaneously.We will then define a system concept addressing mechanical, electrical, and software architectures and perform analyses to demonstrate both technical feasibility and value proposition, maturing the architecture to TRL-3, preparing for Phase II efforts to mature it to TRL-4/5 through testing of prototypes of key platform components.