Extended Range Communications Support for the X-33

Communications support for the X-33 requires addressing several interesting challenges to meet program and range safety requirements. In addition, the heavily cost driven program has provided concessions to the communications support to reduce the cost of networking the extended range. Cost trade-offs showed that by lowering the telemetry data rate from 2 Megabits per second to 1440 Megabits per second that significant cost avoidance could be realized. Also, by adopting standard telecommunications data rate for the uplink data stream, an efficient and integrated solution for the extended range communications could be supported. Meeting the program requirements as well as range safety requirements for this effort are critical to the success of the program. This paper describes some of the important requirements driving the design of the extended range communications support and the design of the system to meet those requirements.