NASA small satellite duo deploys from space station into Earth

After spending five months aboard the international space station, NASA's two Node satellites were deployed on May 16th, 2016 from NanoRacks platform and into low-Earth orbit in order to begin an  anticipated technology demonstration. The small satellites will orbit 250 miles above Earth and will demonstrate the ability to receive and distribute commands in space from the ground while exchanging scientific data from their onboard radiation instruments. This feat will be a first for small satellites to achieve.

According to Andrew Petro, program executive for the Small Spacecraft Technology Program (SSTP) in the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, ""The purpose of the Nodes demonstration is to test out the potential for using a network of small, low-cost satellites to perform complex science missions. If we can demonstrate that any single satellite can 'talk' to the ground on behalf of a whole network of satellites, that's a great tool for creating new, more affordable space mission concepts."

This is an important feat as it will show the small satellites can be controlled without communicating to each other directly in a network. This form of inner-satellite communications will enable future constellation command and control capabilities that can be operated. This could open up new missions and improve the speed of research for new discovery. Such applications that could be added include multi-satellite science missions, the formation of synthetic aperture radars for Earth-sensing systems, as well as large aperture observatories for next-generation telescopes. They also can serve to collect science measurements distributed over space and time to study the Earth, the Earth's magnetosphere, gravity field, and Earth-Sun interactions.

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