SBIR-STTR Award

Direct to Phase II

Tenacity Space Systems (TSS), Inc. proposes to perform a flight demonstration of the Tenacity Target Vehicle (TTV) to address payload mass and kinematic performance requirements for Missile Defense Agency (MDA) target applications. The demonstration flight will focus on several key technologies that will offer MDA a low-cost liquid fueled target vehicle for future missions. The TTV is based on an on-going development program to rapidly implement a suborbital launch vehicle variant. The TTV performance will closely match many liquid threat ballistic missiles and will provide high fidelity emulation for MDA data collection. The flight demonstration will anchor the target vehicle design for suborbital operations intended for MDA payloads and show that a single stage vehicle can address MDA performance requirements for a short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) vehicle. The robust propulsion system will demonstrate flexibility to meet mission requirements in the SRBM and Medium Range Ballistic Missile target classes. The payload stage will be converted into a ballistic reentry body and instrumented to serve as a data-collection asset intended to gather environmental parameters through reentry. Data collected during the TTV burn and subsequent shroud reentry will be used to anchor MDA analytical models. We will collaborate with MDA to define target-relevant instrumentation data.