Spaceventures: can the Air Force build a satellite in six days?

• Author: Jean, Grace

KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M.--Building a small satellite in the future could be as simple as ordering a personal computer today. At least, that's what Air Force Research Laboratory's scientists are trying to achieve. They are experimenting with a "plug -and-play" concept that will allow engineers and technicians to construct a spacecraft in as little as six days.

"Just as you plug a mouse or keyboard into your computer, your computer pauses to recognize that it was added and figures out how to integrate it into the system ... That's what we'd like to do on a bigger scale with aerospace platforms," says Jim Lyke, principal electronics engineer and technical advisor for the lab's space electronics branch.

Space technologies, such as satellites, traditionally have taken years, if not decades, to develop.

But with the nation becoming increasingly dependent upon space-based systems, and with a growing need to protect and

reconstitute those technologies following hostile or naturally occurring events, the ability to piece together satellites faster and send them into orbit quickly is an urgent imperative. So pressing is the movement that it has a name: operationally responsive space.

To build on-demand satellites for that purpose, researchers have turned in part to the commercial electronics industry for inspiration. There, the plug and play concept--in which components manufactured by different companies are compatible and can integrate autonomously into a single operating system--has been around for more than a decade.

With the method so ubiquitous in the PC industry, it seems an easy principle to apply to space technologies. Not so, says Lyke.

"In the spacecraft world nothing is plug and play. We're the first activity to create a true plug and play," he says.

Spacecraft manufacturers do not follow universal standards, says Lyke. Adding to the difficulties is that many of the technologies are custom-designed and are often from different vintages.

"A lot of people believe they can have plug and play by standardizing. It's an easy seductive idea: 'Here, use standard B because everyone is building standard B.' The problem is, these standards don't go far enough," says Lyke.

For example, two gyroscopes manufactured by different companies may both comply with an electronics guideline known as RS-422. But chances are the devices still won't interoperate in a spacecraft became each vendor builds them differently.

"Even though they comply with the standard, there is no understanding as to how those...