Benchmark has been awarded a NASA Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to advance development of our Aquila Small Spacecraft Transfer Stage (SSTS), a low-cost, small spacecraft compatible solution engineered for delivery of payloads to high-energy orbits, including lunar destinations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Designed to bridge the accessibility gap between common launch insertion points and mission-critical orbits, Aquila combines Benchmark\u2019s flight-proven high-test peroxide (HTP) bipropellant propulsion with an electric Hall-Effect Thruster resulting in a versatile low-cost, scalable transfer stage. The platform integrates proprietary control electronics, to deliver precise autonomous mobility in space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Aquila system is capable of delivering over 50 kg of payload to low lunar orbit (LLO) from a circular low Earth orbit (LEO), and is reconfigurable to trade chemical for electric propulsion depending on mission needs, enabling flexibility in mass, volume, and delta-V profiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWinning Phase II positions Aquila as a game-changer for small satellite missions requiring access to orbits previously dominated by larger, costlier spacecraft,\u201d said Ryan McDevitt, Benchmark\u2019s Chief Technology Officer. \u201cBy combining high-thrust and high-endurance technologies with a modular, launch-agnostic design, Aquila opens new doors for both commercial and government customers targeting destinations from GEO to the Moon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most Aquila subsystems are already at Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) 6\u20139 or are commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS), streamlining the path toward critical design, qualification, and flight infusion by 2026\/2027. The Phase II effort will mature Aquila to a flight-ready system architecture, complete with qualification planning, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and expanded mission design studies for beyond-Earth missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This milestone builds on Benchmark\u2019s growing reputation as a leader in non-toxic space mobility, with a suite of heritage propulsion systems launched and over 100 thrusters delivered or on order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Benchmark has been awarded a NASA Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2929,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2927\/revisions\/2929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}