Space Test Program

Past activities

In August 2001, STP carried out two successful activities using the Space Shuttle and ISS. STS-105 delivered and deployed the Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE) externally on the ISS; MISSE was a passive materials exposure experiment and the first external experiment on the ISS. STS-105 also retrieved and returned the Middeck Active Control Experiment II (MACE II) from the ISS, which had operated for nearly a year as the first internal experiment on the ISS.

On 30 September 2001, STP and NASA launched the Kodiak Star mission on an Athena I launch vehicle, marking the first orbital launch from Kodiak Island, Alaska. That mission carried NASA's Starshine III spacecraft and three small DoD spacecraft that tested a variety of new space technologies. STP and the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate developed a secondary payload adapter ring for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), capable of hosting up to six 180 kg microsatellites.

STP also worked closely with NASA and the United States Navy on the Geosynchronous Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer / Indian Ocean Meteorology and Oceanography Imager project. In December 2001, STS-108 hosted the Shuttle Ionospheric Modification with Pulsed Localized Exhaust (SIMPLEX) experiment, which observed ionospheric disturbances created by Space Shuttle engine burns via ground radar sites and supported plume technology, plume signature, and space weather modeling.

SIMPLEX flew again on STS-110 in April 2002. STP also obtained a 1-year radio frequency license extension for the Picosat experiment launched on the Kodiak Star mission. On 6 January 2003, STP and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) launched the Coriolis satellite, a risk-reduction effort for NPOESS, aboard a Titan II launch vehicle. On 9 March 2007, six satellites were launched into low Earth Orbit on a shared Atlas V launch vehicle on the STP-1 mission: Orbital Express (ASTRO and NextSat, DARPA), MidSTAR-1 (United States Naval Academy), FalconSat3 (United States Air Force Academy), STPSat 1 (USAF's Space Test Program), and CFESat (Los Alamos National Laboratory).

The satellites shared the launcher through use of an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Secondary Payload Adapter (ESPA); United Launch Alliance provided a video feed of the launch. The C/NOFS satellite, launched on 16 April 2008, was operated by the Space Test Program. The third Minotaur IV, known as STP-S26, launched successfully in November 2010 from the Kodiak Launch Complex, with the launch facility contractor being Alaska Aerospace Corporation.

2010

Payloads were released in a 650 km orbit, and the Hydrazine Auxiliary Propulsion System (HAPS) upper stage deployed two ballast payloads into a 1200 km orbit. The payload included the STPSat-2 spacecraft, which carried three experimental payloads: SPEX (Space Phenomenology Experiment) with two payloads to evaluate sensor compatibility for the space environment, and ODTML (Ocean Data Telemetry MicroSatLink) for two-way data relay from terrestrial sensors.

2013

STPSat 3, a copy of STPSat-2 adapted to carry six experiments, launched on 19 November 2013 on the ORS-3 Minotaur 1 launch along with 28 CubeSats. It carried five payloads: Integrated Miniaturized Electrostatic Analyzer Reflight (iMESA-R), Joint Component Research (J-CORE), Strip Sensor Unit (SSU), Small Wind and Temperature Spectrometer (SWATS), and TSI Calibration Transfer Experiment (TCTE), plus a de-orbit module. On 14 October 2014, the DoD awarded Sierra Nevada Corporation's Space Systems a contract to develop and build STPSat-5.

2019

The STP-2 payload launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy on 25 June 2019, including COSMIC-2, a cluster of six satellites with a mass of 277.8 kg each, placed on an orbit with an inclination of 24° to 28.5° with plans for them to move to six separate orbital planes with 60° separation. Two ESPA Grande rings mounted the six COSMIC-2 satellites beneath the upper payload adapter hosting the DSX payload and avionics modules. STP-2 also deployed CubeSats including E-TBEx, PSAT, TEPCE, and ELaNa 15 CubeSats, with LightSail 2 carried by the Prox-1 nanosatellite, plus Oculus-ASR nanosatellite, GPIM, and the Deep Space Atomic Clock.

2021

STPSat-4 launched on 2 November 2019 onboard the Cygnus NG-12 mission and deployed from the ISS on 29 January 2020, hosting iMESA-R, MATRS (a modular solar array that partially failed to deploy), NISTEx (an inferometric star tracker), and NTE (a passive retroreflector); it decayed from orbit on 4 October 2022. The STP-3 mission launched on 7 December 2021 at 10:19 UTC on a ULA Atlas V 551, including STPSat-6 with the Space and Atmospheric Burst Reporting System-3 (SABRS-3) for NNSA, the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) payload for NASA, and seven secondary payloads for the U.S. Air Force, destined for an orbit slightly above geostationary orbit.

The STP-27VPD mission launched on LauncherOne's first mission from Spaceport Cornwall on 9 January 2023, resulting in failure with the rocket and all payloads destroyed in-flight; the mission consisted of two pairs of cubesats: CIRCE 1 and 2 (developed by DSTL and NRL using 6U platforms from Blue Canyon Technologies) and Prometheus 2A and 2B (built by In-Space Missions for the UK Ministry of Defence and NRO). The STP-CR2301 mission successfully launched on a Falcon 9 Block 5 on 12 June 2023 as part of Transporter-8, consisting of two Modular Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (MISR) cubesats to demonstrate two-way communications with ground devices and the XVI cubesat to test the capacity of the Link-16 network to communicate to space.