Please make a donation to support Gunter's Space Page.
Thank you very much for visiting Gunter's Space Page. I hope that this site is useful and informative for you.
If you appreciate the information provided on this site, please consider supporting my work by making a simple and secure donation via PayPal. Please help to run the website and keep everything free of charge. Thank you very much.

ST 8

ST 8 [OSC]

The ST8 (Space Technology 8) Mission, slated for launch in 2009, is a New Millennium Carrier that will host a varied payload of four advanced technologies. Each technology validation experiment will include diagnostic instruments. They will perform detailed measurements to characterize and determine how well the technologies performance in space corresponds to predictions derived from ground-based testing and modeling. The resulting data will be provided to science mission planners to enable a broad range of space-based science projects at significantly reduced risk and cost. The selected suite of advanced technology experiments includes:

  • Ultraflex Next Generation Solar Array System (NGU) from AEC-Able Engineering, Inc., Goleta, Calif. The NGU is an ultra-lightweight flexible-blanket solar array that deploys to provide a significant advancement in performance over existing state-of-the-art for high power arrays. The proposed experiment cost for the NGU is $6.9 million.
  • SAILMAST Ultra Lightweight Boom from AEC-Able Engineering, Inc. The SAILMAST is an ultra-light graphite mast intended for solar sail propulsion systems. The proposed experiment cost for the SAILMAST is $4 million.
  • Miniature Loop Heat Pipe Small Spacecraft Thermal Management System (MLHP) from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The MLHP can transport large heat loads over long distances with small temperature differences and without external pumping powers to provide precise temperature control and reduce the need for supplemental heaters. The proposed experiment cost for the MLHP is $9.8 million.
  • Environmentally Adaptive Fault Tolerant Computing System (EAFTC) from Honeywell International, Inc., Clearwater, Fla. The EAFTC will provide high rate on board processing for science data and autonomous control functions. The proposed experiment cost for the EAFTC is $10 million.

ST8 was planned for a 2009 Pegasus-XL launch, but has been cancelled.

Nation: USA
Type / Application: Technology
Operator: NASA
Contractors: Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC)
Equipment: NGU, SAILMAST, MLHP, EAFTC
Configuration: MicroStar-2
Propulsion: ?
Power: 2 deployable solar arrays, batteries
Lifetime: 7 months
Mass: 246 kg
Orbit: 450 km × 955 km SSO
Satellite COSPAR Date LS Launch Vehicle Remarks
ST 8 - cancelled Va, L-1011 Pegasus-XL

References:

  • Orbital Sciences Corp.: ST-8

Cite this page: