Rideshare on NASA Missions: Realities and Triumphs

Small spacecraft technology advancements have transformed the way NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) strategically executes science investigations. In support of this new approach, SMD established the Rideshare Office in 2020 to implement and define the SMD-wide rideshare strategy. The objective of the office is to maximize science, exploration, and technology return on investment by enabling rideshare or accommodation opportunities for small spacecraft on SMD primary mission launches, and VADR launch procurements which are managed by the NASA Launch Services Program (LSP). The SRO also enables opportunities for NASA small sats on other government agency and international space agency partner launches. The SMD Rideshare Office (SRO) serves as the single point of contact across NASA SMD for coordinating rideshare opportunities between compatible payloads and government launch opportunities. The SRO holds a leadership role across SMD and the rideshare community, which allows it to provide and manage consolidated resources for guidance for potential spacecraft teams and other stakeholders. Such resources include the NASA Rideshare Users Guide (RUG) and do-no harm management strategy, and the SMD Secondary Payload Rideshare Programmatic Framework (SPD-32).

Rideshare as a method of access to space is extremely popular amongst both the government, and especially commercial industry. The practice of integrating multiple missions on a single launch service is complex and an extremely relevant topic of discussion for the small sat community. This presentation will provide SMD’s and LSP’s unique perspective and discussion on NASA’s approach to rideshare and will provide an overview of rideshare realities and processes. It will describe technical and programmatic lessons learned from implementing different rideshare configurations and do-no-harm management approaches.