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More than 4,500 recent photographs have been taken from space by a compact space imaging payload, dubbed GEOStare2, developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers and collaborators at Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, capturing images for space domain awareness, astronomy and Earth observation.
The space telescopes were integrated into a Tyvak nanosatellite, weighing 25 pounds, that flew into orbit on May 15 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, according to LLNL officials.
“Our payload is operating very well; we’re ahead of schedule on the checkout,” said LLNL astrophysicist Wim de Vries, an associate program leader for the lab’s space science and security program. “The satellite is functioning extremely well.”
“We are more than pleased with the quality and resolution of the images we have been receiving from Tyvak-0130,” added Marc Bell, CEO of Terran Orbital, Tyvak’s parent company. “Our collaboration with LLNL has been incredibly successful thus far and we are more than optimistic about the future.”
The technology has been developed by LLNL and Tyvak under a four-year, $6 million cooperative research and development agreement to advance compact satellites for commercial applications, officials said. The partnership combines LLNL’s Monolithic Telescope (MonoTele) technology with Tyvak’s expertise producing high-reliability spacecraft.
