SpIRIT

SpIRIT [University of Melbourne]

The SpIRIT (Space Industry – Responsive – Intelligent – Thermal Nanosatellite) is an Australian-Italian 6U CubeSats supported in Australia by the Australian Space Agency’s International Space Investment – Expand Capability scheme.

The satellite has following objectives:

• A high-performance Australian-designed and made spacecraft platform (Apogee satellite bus by Inovor Technologies), capable of competing with international suppliers.
• One main science payload for advanced gamma and x-ray remote sensing – the HERMES instrument, developed with funding by the Italian Space Agency (HERMES Technological Pathfinder) and by the European Commission H2020 framework (HERMES Scientific Pathfinder).
• Innovative made-in-Australia products to be space qualified for IP generation, including: The Neumann Space Thruster, a novel high efficiency electric propulsion solution ideally suited for applications in Lunar orbit and beyond Earth; The University of Melbourne Thermal Management Integrated System (TheMIS) for precision temperature control of sensitive instrumentation; The University of Melbourne Mercury module for adaptive autonomous low-latency communications; and The University of Melbourne Payload Management System, designed to facilitate integration of complex instrumentation in off-the-shelf satellite platforms, and to reliably control their operations and carry out advanced data processing on-board.
• Demonstration of an efficient ground segment capable of receiving operations requests, applying user priority levels, and making complex decisions about tasking of multi-band and multi-network satellite communications, opening new opportunities for rapid satellite re-tasking and data dissemination