SBIR-STTR Award

The opportunity exists to significantly advance the introduction of a low-cost upper stage for DARPAs Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) by leveraging Garvey Spacecraft Corporations (GSCs) on-going nanosat launch vehicle (NLV) development and flight test program along with focused composite tank and wireless data networking R&D being conducted by XS-1 contractor Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems (NGAS). GSC has made substantial progress towards the implementation of a series of two-stage NLVs that are optimized for delivering cubesat and nanosat-class payloads to a variety of low Earth orbits. The NLV uses the high-density-impulse propellant combination of densified propylene and LOX along with composite cryogenic propellant tanks to enable simple pressure fed propulsion system/engine cycle. This architecture allows for lowered mission costs through the absence of turbopumps which reduces hardware costs, improves reliability, and simplifies engine start-up. The NLV booster stage designs are readily scalable to the incremental series of XS-1 upper stage test and operational missions. Furthermore, GSCs extensive experience in flight testing prototype stages and demonstrating TRL=6 maturity for critical technologies that include composite cryogenic propellant tanks, advanced engines and alternative cryogenic hydrocarbon fuels is applicable to conducting an aggressive Phase II flight test program.

The opportunity exists to significantly advance the introduction of a low-cost upper stage for DARPAs Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) by leveraging our teams on-going nanosat launch vehicle (NLV) development program.The Phase I effort has resulted in an upper stage concept that is ready to enter final design, followed by assembly, integration, checkout and static fire testing of an initial engineering unit.This final upper stage design reflects multiple trades that addressed the original Phase I objectives .The most significant design driver was the mitigation of technical risk by selection of a dual-stage configuration for the XS-1 upper stage(s), for which the stage presented here serves as the final (Stage 3) element of the launch system.We determined that the impact on marginal operating costs was offset by the reduction in risk and costs during development and qualification for a single upper stage configuration which would require adoption of extremely challenging design targets and advanced technologies.Moreover, the current design provides sufficient flexibility for use across a variety of XS-1 configurations and can be employed on its own for early development flights.It also retains a high degree of traceability to our commercial NLV.