{"id":70352,"date":"2017-06-12T08:22:53","date_gmt":"2017-06-12T15:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/what-if-we-built-spacecraft-in-space"},"modified":"2017-06-12T08:22:53","modified_gmt":"2017-06-12T15:22:53","slug":"what-if-we-built-spacecraft-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/what-if-we-built-spacecraft-in-space","title":{"rendered":"What if we built spacecraft\u2026 IN SPACE?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/what-if-we-built-spacecraft-in-space.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We are incredibly excited to announce that Firmamentum, a division of Tethers Unlimited, Inc. (TUI), has signed a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a system that will use in-space manufacturing and robotic assembly technologies to construct on orbit a small satellite able to provide high-bandwidth satellite communications (SATCOM) services to mobile receivers on the ground.<\/p>\n<p>Under the OrbWeaver Direct-to-Phase-II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) effort, Firmamentum aims to combine its technologies for in-space recycling, in-space manufacturing, and robotic assembly to create a system that could launch as a secondary payload on an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV). This system would recycle a structural element of that rocket, known as an EELV Secondary Payload Adapter (ESPA) ring, by converting the ring\u2019s aluminum material into a very large, high-precision antenna reflector. The OrbWeaver\u2122 payload would then attach this large antenna to an array of TUI\u2019s SWIFT\u00ae software defined radios launched with the OrbWeaver payload to create a small satellite capable of delivering up to 12 gigabits per second of data to K-band very small aperture terminals (VSAT) on the ground.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TethersUnlimited\/photos\/a.256325817736180.62355.189753287726767\/1489611637740919\/?type=3\">https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TethersUnlimited\/photos\/a.256325817...19\/?type=3<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are incredibly excited to announce that Firmamentum, a division of Tethers Unlimited, Inc. (TUI), has signed a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a system that will use in-space manufacturing and robotic assembly technologies to construct on orbit a small satellite able to provide high-bandwidth satellite communications (SATCOM) services [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,418,6,1514,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-internet","category-robotics-ai","category-space-travel","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}