To showcase its ability to meet warfighter needs more rapidly, Lockheed Martin [LMT] in December will demonstrate that it can calibrate a new sensor on-orbit faster than is typical so that it can begin operating quickly.
The company’s new wideband electronically steerable (ESA) payload demonstrator was integrated on a Terran Orbital [LLAP]-built Nebula small satellite bus and will be launched next month aboard a Firefly Aerospace Alpha rocket.
It usually takes months to power-on and calibrate on-orbit sensors before they can perform missions but Lockheed Martin said its proprietary ESA design will be calibrated “in a fraction of the time” compared to traditional sensors. The company also said the ESA design is scalable and uses “highly reliable commercia parts for quick, mass-producibility.”
Lockheed Martin said its ESA technology is “critical to future remote sensing architectures.”
The payload, nicknamed “Tantrum,” was developed by the Lockheed Martin Space Ignite organization and went from early architecture to flight-ready within two years. Ignite is focused on exploratory research and development at speed, and introducing new and innovative products.
“For this demonstration, Lockheed Martin has invested its own resources and is embracing more calculated risk from initial development through on-orbit operations to bring new technologies to the forefront of space faster and to keep our customers ahead of ready,” Sonia Phares, vice president of Ignite, said in a statement.
The upcoming demonstration is part of Lockheed Martin’s 21st Century Security initiative, which aims to bring make greater use of commercial technologies and practices to provide new solutions and capabilities for its Defense Department customers more quickly. Other self-funded space initiatives the company has include Pony Express 2, which will demonstrate mesh networking among satellites, and the Tactical Satellite, which will demonstrate on-orbit processing, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Firefly in June announced a launch agreement with Lockheed Martin to support a technology demonstration supported by an Alpha rocket. Lockheed Martin said at the time that the Alpha provides access to space for small payloads. In September, Firefly used an Alpha rocket to launch the U.S. Space Force’s VICTUS NOX mission to showcase tactically responsive space capabilities, going from launch notice to launch ready in under 24 hours and then lifting off several hours later.