NAIL: Part of testing ST5 is measuring the system's ability to conduct science.
Here's Dr. Jim Slavin to show us what ST5 science mission is all about.
DR. JIM SLAVIN: I'm Jim Slavin. I'm the ST5 project scientist. ST5 is NASA's pathfinder mission for future microsats and constellation operations.
We send spacecraft out to study space weather because space weather affects satellites and spacecraft
that are important to us here on the surface of the Earth. A simple example, but a really important one, is telecommunications.
We rely upon spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit to provide us with communications around the globe.
When we have extreme space weather events, that service can be disrupted or, in extreme cases, spacecraft can even be rendered inoperable.
It's not necessary for us to go out into deep space. That's expensive and it also complicates many aspects of the operations.
It's only really important that we get above the Earth's atmosphere
and that we get out into a proper space environment.
As a result of this, ST5 is going to go into low-Earth orbit.
It's going to be in an orbit that comes as close as 300 kilometers to the Earth and goes out as far as about 4,500 kilometers.
It's going to be a near-polar orbit, so it's going to take, so it's going to eventually see,
eventually almost all of the Earth will pass underneath the spacecraft.
So it's going to be relatively close to the Earth, and that's all we need to validate our technologies.
Now, the vision for these constellations, though, also involves them possibly being a better route to making some of the big,
some of the measurements that are presently done by very big spacecraft.
For example, instead of having a large space telescope with one big mirror, you might have 100 little spacecraft,
each carrying just a piece of the mirror.
And the reason NASA is interested in that is that if this technology really were to fulfill its promise, its technological promises,
we might have a route to safer, more robust, better and conceivably even cheaper future space telescopes. And that's just one example.