AZ Space Technologies

Projects

We have contracts with commercial and government entities including Arizona State University (ASU), Moog, and ATA Aerospace.

EMIRS (Emirates Mars InfraRed Spectrometer) - Arizona State University
- Instrument Electronics Hardware and Software
L'TES (Thermal Infrared Spectrometer) - Arizona State University
- Instrument Electronics Hardware and Software
Cubesat Projects - Arizona State University
- LunaH-Map (Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper)
- SPARCS (Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat)
Moog
- Guidance, Navigation, and Control Consulting
ATA Aerospace
- Guidance, Navigation, and Control Consulting

EMIRS (Emirates Mars InfraRed Spectrometer)

The ASU EMIRS interferometer instrument will sample the Martian surface during the Hope Mars Mission. This interferometer has 9 detectors which will be used to determine the composition of the Martian soil. AZST completed the design, manufacturing, and testing of the hardware and software avionics for the instrument, the heart of which is a printed circuit board with a rad-hard Xilinx Virtex 5 FPGA with an embedded LEON3 32-bit RISC processor along with some smaller related boards. The main board processes commands and collects data samples from the interferometer, performs data compression, then creates and sends both housekeeping telemetry and data packets to the spacecraft for transmission to the ground. The board also controls the motion of a stepper and a linear motor.

L'TES (Thermal Infrared Spectrometer)

The L'TES interferometer instrument will be aboard the Lucy spacecraft whose mission to investigate the Jupiter Trojan Asteroids by conducting multiple fly-bys of these, which that reside at the Jupiter L4 and L5 Lagrange points. AZST will provide the electronics for the L’TES instrument to be designed, built, and tested by ASU for the Lucy mission. The L’TES electronics design incorporates servo design features developed for the EMIRS instrument. The L’TES Electronics will provide closed loop servo control of the interferometer mirror, control infrared detector sampling, and provide signal conditioning for the input signals. Spacecraft interfaces for command, telemetry, and the sample data collected from the IR detector are provided using RS-422 interfaces. Our unique approach to controlling the mirror actuator relies on using a LEON3 soft core processor embedded in the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) for executing the servo control algorithm and controlling IR detector sampling.

LunaH-Map (Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper) Cubesat

LunaH-Map is a 6U CubeSat that will orbit the lunar South Pole at low altitude and produce high spatial resolution maps of the lateral and vertical distribution of hydrogen (H) in the lunar regolith. AZST engineers play key roles on the team at ASU including Chief Engineer, thermal analysis, mechanical design, and integration and test for the LunaH-Map project.

SPARCS (Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat)

SPARCS (Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat) is a 6U CubeSat that will be the first ever mission dedicated to monitoring the high-energy radiation environments of exoplanets throughout their lifetimes by continuously measuring the FUV and NUV emission of low-mass stars from young to old. AZST provides system engineering, thermal analysis, and mechanical design for the SPARCS team at ASU.