StarSpec's team has demonstrated unprecedented success in full life-cycle development, implementation, and in-flight operations of low-lead, high-impact space-based solutions, which is making waves in new space applications.
In addition to breaking ground on NASA's EXCITE project, StarSpec has been officially contracted to join a second high-profile NASA-led project as part of the 2021 NASA Pioneers program. StarSpec's primary role on this project (official details to be released) will be the design, fabrication, integration, and in-field operational support for a first-of-its-kind suborbital platform to be launched and operated from McMurdo, Antarctica as early as 2025 and Kiruna, Sweden in the following year. Though in the early stages of development, this project promises to not only be a welcome engineering challenge for the StarSpec team, but an incredible opportunity to strengthen ties with technology development leaders and science innovators at NASA and research institutions across North America.
We have hit the ground running in the first month of 2021, completing critical development for the AVIN project—a partnership with Aposys to develop high-definition three-dimensional maps for self driving car applications. StarSpec and Aposys hope to continue development of this project, fusing StarSpec satellite imagery with data collected from AVIN to develop the necessary mapping infrastructure for fully autonomous self driving car applications in urban and suburban environments. More updates on this exciting project and more to come soon!
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StarSpec is finishing off a busy year having received an incredible amount of interest from research and technology development groups across North America. With nearly half a dozen high-value commitments from academic institutions and high-profile research groups at NASA, StarSpec is looking forward to providing suborbital gondola hardware and software for a broad spectrum of scientific diversity, from exoplanet atmospheres to observing intricate properties of the galactic interstellar medium to probing the fundamental mechanisms of the universe itself. We are excited to break ground and provide StarSpec technology and expertise to enable exploration of these new frontiers starting as early as Spring 2021.
StarSpec Technologies has been contracted to take part in a critical design study for a state-of-the-art suborbital gondola as part of NASA's new Pioneers program. As part of an ongoing partnership with academic institutions across Canada and the United States, StarSpec's primary role on this project (details to be released) will be to design, manufacture and integrate the primary gondola pointing and scanning system while providing critical in-field operational support and training throughout and up to the project's at-float commissioning stage. When funded, this multi-institutional project will be the first-of-its kind balloon-based remote research facility to be launched via NASA's Super-Pressure Balloon capabilities out of Wanaka, New Zealand as early as Spring 2025.
We are excited to announce that StarSpec is part of the winning EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope (EXCITE) proposal team, headed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. StarSpec will develop, construct, and integrate the suborbital balloon-borne platform for the project. Based on the high-precision telescope and image stabilization systems developed by our core team, StarSpec will enable EXCITE to make spectrographic measurements of planets outside our solar system (exoplanets) with unparalleled accuracy and precision. Scheduled to launch from McMurdo, Antarctica in 2025 to near-space via a football-stadium-sized balloon as part of NASA's Long Duration Balloon program, the EXCITE project aims to use these high fidelity measurements to better understand the atmospheric content of these exoplanets at a level not achievable with current ground, sub-orbital, or space-based instrumentation.