Development and Operation of a Micro-satellite Dynamic Test Facility for Distributed Flight Operations

The Microsatellite Dynamic Test Facility is a joint venture by the University of Southern California's Information Science Institute and the Space Engineering Research Center. Located in Southern CA, the Facility allows multiple variable-scale satellites to practice complex spacecraft missions while floating on air bearings in a near-frictionless environment. Several prototype vehicles were developed to provide a research platform to users. The vehicles can levitate for hours and carry up to 50kg of external payload. They are guided by a suite of both inertial and relative navigation sensors, and include an application programming interface (API) through which users can develop and test software. Each prototype communicates wirelessly with the others and with a local ground station, and has micro-thrusters to provide motion with 3 degrees of freedom. The facility and prototype vehicles together allow for research on nearly all aspects of formation flight, autonomous rendezvous and proximity operations in space in a very low cost environment.