DARPA is not afraid to drop huge amounts of money on projects that sound
pretty far out at times. DARPA’s most recent project has it spending $32M
dollars to develop technology to allow for a virtual satellite network.
DARPA announced this week that it awarded contracts for the first phase of its
Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying Spacecraft United by
Information Exchange (System F6) program (PDF). The contracts were
awarded to Boeing in the amount of $12,891,049, Lockheed Martin Space Systems
for $5,762,781, Northrop Grumman Space & Mission Systems Corp for
$6,159,866 and to Orbital Sciences Corp for $13,648,758.
DARPA says the program intends to show that large monolithic satellites can
be replaced by a group of smaller, individually launched satellites connected
by a wireless network in orbit and flown in a cluster. The stated ultimate goal
for the System F6 project is to have a fractioned spacecraft system and
demonstrate it in orbit in approximately four years.
Dr. Owen Brown, DARPA F6 Program Manager said in a statement, “We see many
benefits to fractionation. Fractionation provides the flexibility to launch
individual payloads when they are ready so that an otherwise complex,
multi-payload program isn’t delayed. It diversifies risk during launch by not
putting all of our eggs into one basket, greatly improves robustness to attack,
and provides the capability to rapidly replace a failed component without needing
complex in-orbit servicing.”
“And we have the potential to take advantage of Moore’s law by frequently
upgrading on-orbit computing resources using relatively small modules, as
opposed to waiting decades until we replace the entire spacecraft,” Brown
continued. “The F6 architecture will demonstrate an approach that will enable
us to do these types of crucial space activities in the future, and maybe even
some incredible things we haven’t even begun to consider.”
The first phase of the project will allow contractors to develop key
technologies to enable the fractionated approach along with the required robust
wireless communications and fault-tolerant distributed computing. Contractors
will choose a space system mission and develop a system to accomplish it. The
contractors are also developing systems to test the designs as well among other
things.
DARPA was in the news in January 2008 with the announcement of a nanotube
anti-radiation pill under development.