The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) was a robotic spacecraft operated by NASA. It was launched in 2009.

The mission was conceived as a low-cost means of determining the nature of hydrogen detected at the polar regions of the moon.The main LCROSS mission objective was to explore the presence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater near a lunar polar region. It was successful in discovering water in the southern lunar crater Cabeus.

It was launched together with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) on June 18, 2009, as part of the shared Lunar Precursor Robotic Program, the first American mission to the Moon in over ten years. Together, LCROSS and LRO form the vanguard of NASA's return to the Moon, and are expected to influence United States government decisions on whether or not to colonize the Moon.

LCROSS was designed to collect and relay data from the impact and debris plume resulting from the launch vehicle's spent Centaur upper stage (and data collecting Shepherding Spacecraft) striking the crater Cabeus near the south pole of the Moon.

Teledyne Reynolds offers custom designed and catalogue specified high voltage cable assemblies, connectors and wire for payload and launcher applications.

The custom designed products are manufactured in our clean facility, where specialised test requirements outside of our own test capabilities form part of a programme, the requirement is contracted to third parties including the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories.

Catalogue Products

Catalogue products are provided as specified in their data or in accordance with an agreed Acceptance Test Procedure (ATP). There is a facility for lot sample retention and the provision of data packs in accordance with customer requirements. Our catalogue products include:
600S (Space Use) Series: Our 600S subminiature, high reliability connectors have been specifically designed to operate over a long period of time in the hard vacuum of space. The operating voltage is 5 kVDC at a minimum of 10 millitorr to deep space, its operating temperature range is -55°C to +125°C.
600SQ Series: Our 66SQ subminiature, high reliability connectors are advanced, space qualified, single-pin high voltage connectors.
For additional information on 600S Series, please Download PDF

Custom Products

Payload specific interconnect solutions, designed in conjunction with payload integrators to meet the most highly specified performance and environmental demands.

Heritage

We have supplied cable assembly products to a number of major programmes including:
International Space Station.
BEPI Columbo.
Arianne V.

ABSL Space Products  is known as a leading supplier of Lithium-ion batteries for spacecraft and launch vehicles.

ABSL is a major supplier of primary and secondary Lithium-ion batteries to the space industry, having accumulated more than 10,000 cell years of operation in space without failure. Since pioneering the use of Lithium-ion with the world's first rechargeable Lithium-ion spacecraft battery (PROBA), we have received battery contracts for more than eighty spacecraft and launch vehicles. Thirty four of our battery systems have been launched powering spacecraft in various orbits. PROBA was designed for one-year mission duration and is still operating after nearly seven years in orbit.

Our battery products provide power to satellites and launch vehicles to:

• operate on-board instruments and experiments
• remain in the correct orbit and orientation
• communicate with the Earth

ABSL can supply batteries to meet the range of spacecraft and launch vehicle demands. ABSL primary batteries can be used for launch vehicle or ‘one shot’ spacecraft missions such as landers. ABSL secondary batteries are used on launch vehicles for avionics, pyrotechnic, flight termination and thrust vector control systems. On spacecraft, ABSL rechargeable battery systems mostly provide power during Launch and Early orbit OPerations (LEOP) periods as well as on station when solar arrays are in shadow. For all space applications, high reliability and assured performance in the most demanding of environments is key. ABSL batteries have proved incredibly reliable with industry leading performance with light weight being particularly important as this frees payload mass either for added spacecraft utility or launch capability.

Dynetics propulsion experts have developed a vacuum-rated, high voltage exciter system.

The system has many advantages over traditional exciter/ignition systems.

Features of the Integrated Exciter System:

• Lightweight
• Highly integrated
• Low power requirements
• Space rated
• Hermetically sealed design eliminates EMI leakage unlike traditional spark systems
• Close coupled plug and exciter eliminates need for a high voltage spark exciter wire, which is plagued with EMI leakage challenges

Company: Dynetics

Dynetics is an industry innovator in affordable micro-satellites and space propulsion systems development.

It is is an employee-owned engineering, applied science, and information technology company headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, USA. Its primary customers are the United States Department of Defense, the United States Intelligence Community, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Core Capabilities

• AEROSPACE VEHICLE RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, TEST, AND EVALUATION
• CYBERSECURITY
• ELECTRONIC DESIGN, ANALYSIS, PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT, AND FABRICATION
• EO/IR SYSTEMS RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, TEST, AND EVALUATION
• INSTRUMENTATION AND TELEMETRY
• INTEGRATED EXCITER SYSTEM
• INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE
• LOGISTICS
• MECHANICAL DESIGN, ANALYSIS, AND FABRICATION
• MICRO-SATELLITE SPACECRAFT
• MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS
• MODELING AND SIMULATION
• NETWORK SYSTEMS
• PROGRAM SUPPORT
• SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS
• SPACE PROPULSION
• SPACE SYSTEMS
• SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
• TRAINING

Mars Foundation is an American organisation with the mission to design, fund, build and operate the first permanent settlement on Mars (project called 'Mars Homestead Project').

The initial goal for the Mars Homestead Project is to identify the core technologies needed for an economical, growing Mars Base built primarily with local materials. Efforts will then be focused on prototype projects of increasing sophistication. These could include the selection of existing equipment which could be used on Mars, or the construction of prototypes of new equipment. These steps will lead the Mars Foundation to the establishment of an entire simulated Mars settlement at a location here on Earth, which will serve as a research and outreach center.

The initial programming feasibility study has been conducted by a small Program Team, whose members have professional or academic experience in applicable engineering areas. Areas of expertise include: Materials, Structures, Mechanical Systems, Architecture, Agriculture, Nutrition, Process/PSSS, Electrical Systems, I&C, Data/Telecom, EHS, IE, Mars Geology/Topography, Space Transportation, Spacesuits, Systems Integration, and many others.

The Mars Foundation has also established a small board of technical advisors who provide expertise in specific areas, and created a general "brainstorming" discussion group which is open to the interested public, regardless of their technical experience.

The company TriSept Corporation is a seasoned technical service provider to the space and intelligence communities.

It is a small business comprised of hand-selected industry and technology veterans that possess an average of over 27 years of broad-based experience necessary to successfully plan and execute the full space lifecycle and provide information assurance expertise to protect our Nation's sensitive information. 

TriSept takes advantage of the mass and fairing volume margin to add smaller spacecraft allowing more efficient access to space for all while reducing individual launch costs without an increase in risk to the mission.

Areas of Expertise

• Systems Engineering
• Program Management Support
• Satellite to Booster Integration
• Specialized Engineering Consultation
• Small Satellite Integration
• Spacecraft Development
• Mission Planning and Support
• Mission Operations

Warp drive is a hypothetical faster-than-light propulsion system in the setting of many science fiction works, most notably Star Trek.

However, how crazy the idea could be, a few months ago, in 2013, physicist Harold White, working at the NASA Johnson Space Center, stunned the aeronautics world when he announced that he and his team at NASA had begun work on the development of a faster-than-light warp drive. His proposed design, a re-imagining of an Alcubierre Drive, may ... eventually result in an engine that can transport a spacecraft to the nearest star in a matter of weeks — and all without violating Einstein's law of relativity.

Some clarifications in this SpaceRef article: here

Harold White published in 2011 an article titled 'Warp Field Mechanics 101' available on the NASA site: here.

The Dual-Stage 4-Grid (DS4G) is an electrostatic ion thruster design developed by the European Space Agency, in collaboration with the Australian National University.

The design was derived from Controlled Thermonuclear Reactor experiments that use a 4-grid mechanism to accelerate ion beams.

The Bolshoi simulation is the most accurate cosmological simulation of the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe yet made.

The starting point for Bolshoi was the best ground- and space-based observations, including NASA's long-running and highly successful WMAP Explorer mission that has been mapping the light of the Big Bang in the entire sky. One of the world's fastest supercomputers then calculated the evolution of a typical region of the universe a billion light years across. The Bolshoi simulation took 6 million cpu hours to run on the Pleiades supercomputer—recently ranked as seventh fastest of the world's top 500 supercomputers—at NASA Ames Research Center.