NASA sees an increasing role in the near future for small satellites in the 5-100 kg size range, which are being eyed as platforms for the rapid demonstration of new technologies and important science missions. Currently, small satellite platforms struggle to balance the three critical tasks of collecting enough power, acquiring data, and downlinking that data to ground stations in a way that maximizes mission return. For these small platforms balancing these three tasks strongly depends on the satellite's attitude control agility.
Honeybee Robotics will develop a low-cost, high-torque and low-jitter satellite attitude control actuator derived from its Tiny Operationally Responsive CMG (TORC) design. The result, TORC-SP, would be an actuator with the simple control interface of a reaction wheel that offers 1-2 orders of magnitude more torque per unit mass at drastically less power than a reaction wheel.
This was one of a total of 5 NASA SBIR Phase I awards that Honeybee has received. The other four are in support of technology developments applied to planetary body surface operations on the moon, Mars and Venus.