SpIRIT

Space Industry – Responsive – Intelligent – Thermal Nanosatellite

About SpIRIT

What Is SpIRIT?

The SpIRIT (Space Industry – Responsive – Intelligent – Thermal) nano-satellite is an Australia-Italy mission supported in Australia by the Australian Space Agency. (Moon to Mars Initiatve: Demonstrator Mission, and previously ISI – Expand Capability).

SpIRIT is growing Australian space industry capabilities through the operations (and previously, the development) of an innovative nano-satellite which continues to break new ground in high-performance autonomous operations, communications, propulsion and thermal management.

SpIRIT is the first made-in-Australia spacecraft to host a foreign space agency’s scientific instrument as its main payload, showcasing the competitiveness of Australia’s space industry, and growing international cooperation in astronomy and space science with the Italian Space Agency.

The SpIRIT design is based on a standard format (6U CubeSat) with ∼ 11.5 kg mass and linear dimensions of approximately 30 × 20 × 10 cm when it was stowed in its launch dispenser, now that it has unfurled all of its deployable structures, it stretches to almost one meter.

The continued SpIRIT operations demonstrates the long-term performance of Australian-made hardware in-orbit. SpIRIT has been operating since December 2023 and will only cease due to the natural de-orbiting in mid 2027.

SpIRIT at a glance

  • An Australian-designed and made spacecraft platform (Apogee satellite bus by Inovor Technologies).
  • One main science payload for advanced gamma and x-ray remote sensing – the HERMES instrument, developed with funding by the Italian Space Agency (HERMES Technological Pathfinder) and by the European Commission H2020 framework (HERMES Scientific Pathfinder).
  • Innovative made-in-Australia products, including:
    • The University of Melbourne Thermal Management Integrated System (TheMIS) for precision temperature control of sensitive instrumentation
    • The University of Melbourne LORIS imaging and AI system for spacecraft inspection, earth-observation and edge-computing.
    • The University of Melbourne Payload Management System, designed to facilitate integration of complex instrumentation in off-the-shelf satellite platforms, and to reliably control their operations and carry out advanced data processing on-board
    • The University of Melbourne Mercury module for adaptive autonomous low-latency communications
    • The Neumann Space Thruster, a novel high efficiency electric propulsion solution ideally suited for applications in Lunar orbit and beyond Earth
  • Demonstration of an efficient ground segment capable of receiving operations requests, applying user priority levels, and making complex decisions about tasking of multi-band and multi-network satellite communications, opening new opportunities for rapid satellite re-tasking and data dissemination

SpIRIT represents a “first-in-space” for all key Australian stakeholders: The Australian Space Agency funded construction in 2020 as its first mission. Industry partners Inovor Technologies and Neumann Space operated their hardware in orbit for the first time. The University of Melbourne is leading its first international cooperative project and is also operating its own payloads in-orbit for the first time.

SpIRIT Gallery

SpIRIT News

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SpIRIT
Space Industry - Responsive - Intelligent - Thermal