Conference Update – Downlink Issue 9

NASA is directing a Hosted Payload Interface Guide Forum and Workshop on Wednesday, March 8 at 9:45 a.m. as part of our Government & Military Forum.  A team of NASA speakers will introduce the agency’s Common Instrument Interface Project and provide an overview of the changes to their Hosted Payload Interface Guide (HPIG) document. This document provides a prospective Instrument Developer with technical recommendations to assist them in designing an Instrument or Payload that may be flown as a hosted payload on commercial satellites flown in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), or Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO).  NASA speakers include:

• Gaj Birur, Thermal Systems, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
• Randy Hein, Mechanical Systems, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
• Eric Ianson, Associate Director of Flight Programs, Earth Science Division/Science Mission Directorate, NASA
• Lowell Primm, Goddard Flight Center, NASA
• Randy Regan, Chief Engineer Earth System Science Pathfinder Program Office, NASA Langley Research Center
• Eric Sunada, Thermal Systems Engineer, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
• Benny Toomarian, Systems Integration, CONOPS, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

George Torres, Senior Advisor, Griffin Communications and Peter Wegner, Chief Technology Officer, Spaceflight Industries/BlackSky Global will speak during the session Milspace in the 21st Century: Smallsats and Disaggregated Space Architectures on Monday, March 6 at 11 a.m. The session discusses the general direction of gov/mil space segment evolution, as it seems to be heading toward smaller satellites and disaggregated architectures for both commercial and government services.

Jess Sponable of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Tactical Technology Office, will be a speaker for the session U.S. Space Corps—a Coast Guard for Space? on Monday, March 6 at 1:45 p.m. Jess will explain how responsibility for space programs is spread among the DoD services, causing dysfunction, concurrency and wasted money and time. He will also discuss how a U.S. Space Corps, created along the lines of the U.S. Coast Guard, could streamline space efforts and infuse the benefits of competition into military space programs.

Defense Daily Air Force reporter Patrick Host will lead a panel, Range Innovation and Reusable Rockets on Monday, March 6 at 3 p.m. with Jim Ball, Founder and Principal, Spaceport Strategies and Charles Miller, NextGen Space, Co-Founder, Nanoracks. The panel will explore what the Pentagon is doing to innovate at the range so it can take advantage of reusable rocketry for military purposes when the technology arrives.