EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – Space Systems Command (SCC) through its partnership with NASA, successfully launched the Space Test Program-Houston 9 (STP-H9) mission, which will deliver eight DoD Space Test Program (STP) experimental payloads to NASA’s International Space Station (ISS).
In the next few days robotic operators at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and in Japan Exploration Aerospace Agency’s operations center in Tsukuba, Japan will team up to remove the STP-H9 payload from the SpaceX-27 trunk and attach it to the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM). The JEM provides power and data to support STP-H9 operations for the next year. STP operators at NASA’s Johnson Space Center will power up and test the payload and turnover the eight experiments to researchers on the ground.
“We are grateful for our 20 plus year partnership with NASA’s ISS Program and their international partners for the opportunity to conduct this critical research on the ISS.” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Shea, director of the DoD Space Test Program. “We also applaud our experiment teams from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), the Air Force Research laboratory (AFRL), the U.S. Air Force Academy, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), in achieving this milestone to test their new technologies in the space environment. Crossing the Technology Readiness Level ‘valley of death’ is a challenging and necessary step to prove these new technologies for future Space Force systems. The Space Test Program’s mission is to provide access to space for emerging DoD technologies. This mission continues STP’s 58-year history of testing these experiments in space and I’m proud of the integrated team for their hard work to launch this payload today.”
STP-H9 is managed by the DoD Space Test Program office located at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico and has an operating location at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas. SSC’s Space Domain Awareness & Combat Power headquartered at Los Angeles Air Force Base, administers the DoD STP which delivers experimental demonstrations of new capabilities and expedient space access solutions for research and development experiments.
“We are excited to reach this major milestone in the STP-H9 mission,” said Rick Caldwell, SSC mission manager for the STP-H9 payload. “The Space Test Program and our experiment teammates kicked off this mission in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and overcame many challenges to reach this milestone today. This mission will test a wide range of technologies from artificial intelligence and machine learning, new space radiation and gamma-ray detectors, wireless power beaming, variable voltage power supplies, and observations of the ionosphere and the effects of gravity waves in the stratosphere.”
The STP team designed and built the integrated payload that will connect the eight experiments to the ISS and allow science data collection. Avionics developed by STP are used to the build and test of these platforms on the ISS.
Space Domain Awareness & Combat Power is the program executive office within Space Systems Command that is responsible for delivering ground- and space-based infrastructure and systems that identify threats to national, allied, and commercial space systems. Its innovations integrate seamlessly across the space enterprise and promote deterrence by providing advances in space-enabled warfighting capabilities to our joint military forces.
Space Systems Command (SSC) is the U.S. Space Force Field Command responsible for acquiring and delivering resilient war fighting capabilities to protect our nation’s strategic advantage in and from space. SSC manages an $11 billion space acquisition budget for the Department of Defense and works in partnership with joint forces, industry, government agencies, academic and allied organizations to accelerate innovation and outpace emerging threats. Our actions today are making the world a better space for tomorrow.