TechEdSat-11 Mission Summary and Survey of Upcoming TES-n Missions

The TechEdSat (TES) nano-satellite flight series is a collaborative effort from the NASA Ames Research Center engaging young professionals, universities, and other government organizations with next generation space technologies. The 6U TES-11 cube satellite was launched on July 3, 2024, and is currently operating in Low-Earth Orbit. The goal of the mission is to test a variety of next generation communication experiments for nano satellites. The cognitive communication payload, developed by NASA Glenn Research Center, involves the User Initiated Service (UIS) and High Delay Tolerant Networking (HTDN) software packages. First, UIS autonomously schedules radio downlinks and automatically determines an appropriate ground station to use. Next, HDTN then determines how to properly package the data to maximize packets received during a scheduled session. HDTN and UIS both operate on the TES custom S-Band Lunar radio. Alternatively, TES-11 also contains a custom 10-Watt UHF radio from NOAA and developed by Microcom. The goal of the radio experiment is to demonstrate satellite to satellite communications with NOAA GOES and the Eumetsat data collection systems. The TES11 radio experiments have both proven successful in flight. The integration and flight testing of the cognitive communication payload and NOAA payload will be discussed. Additionally, an analysis of iridium short-burst-data (SBD) packet transmission rate during TES-11’s polar orbit are presented; cyclic variance in transmission success rates has been observed, which are attributed to the relative precession rate between Iridium constellation and SSO planes.  The communication experiments will have utility for cis-lunar space applications in optimizing data transfer to earth stations.  Lastly, a preview of upcoming TES missions will  be discussed, including the next flight of the BrainStack (an orbital artificial intelligence and machine learning testbed), an atmospheric Heliophysics test probe architecture,  the Doppler Wind and Temperature Sounder (DWTS) technology demonstrations, and the Exo-Brake (an exo-atmospheric braking device for rapid de-orbit and debris mitigation).