The Rogue CubeSat Program, a dual cube satellite program co-developed by the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center and The Aerospace Corporation, finished preparations for launch and was fully integrated onboard Northrop Grumman’s Antares Cygnus launch vehicle at Wallops Island, Va., Nov. 1.
The target launch date is no earlier than Nov. 2, out of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. A live feed is available via NASA Live at: https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive
Rogue is one of many experimental projects encapsulated in the NG-12 Cygnus launch headed for the International Space Station. Rogue is unique in the sense that it will be stored until the release of the Cygnus capsule, and then deployed into its operating orbit.
The CubeSats were designed, built, and tested by The Aerospace Corporation, a national nonprofit corporation that operates as a federally funded research and development center dedicated to advancing the nation’s missions in space. The Rogue CubeSats design emphasizes commercial-off-the-shelf sensors, non-exotic parts, and features a high-speed laser communications system that will enable downlinks of large image files. The dual CubeSats will also use novel wavelengths for infrared sensing.
The mission priority is to investigate the feasibility of developing small and low-cost satellites as a means of rapidly reconstituting a proliferated low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation. Rogue has succeeded so far by meeting its targeted 16-month design, build, and test timeline. The satellites will also work on jumpstarting LEO cloud scene processing and provide test data for new short-wave infrared band satellites.
