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Goddard Space Flight Center — SST Institutional Page

GSFC led 4 SST projects (3.6% of portfolio). Its institutional role was as a university bridge — the NASA center that partnered with academic PIs to conduct subsystem research. Three of GSFC's four projects were effectively university-led work with GSFC as institutional home. One project flew (RadSat), and one seeded a major CubeSat program at CU Boulder.

Last updated: 2026-04-14 (session 38 — NTRS counts added, MAXWELL launch Dec 2026 confirmed, RadPC lunar landing documented, Palo NTRS publications added)

SST Projects

Project ID Period TRL PI / Institution Outcome
RadSat 91661 2013–2016 5→6 Brock LaMeres / Montana State flew (RadSat-g, ISS deploy July 2018)
High Rate X/S-band Comms 91378 2013–2016 3→5 Scott Palo / CU Boulder transitioned (→ MAXWELL CubeSat)
FEMTA 91370 2013–2016 3→5 Alina Alexeenko / Purdue no visible outcome
Mini FTS 106803 2013–2015 3→5 John C. Allen / GSFC no visible outcome

Success rate: 1 flew (25%), 1 transitioned. Below portfolio average for flight (23%) but 50% had some downstream impact.

RadSat: COTS FPGA Radiation Tolerance — Flew from ISS → Landed on the Moon

The Radiation Tolerant FPGA-based SmallSat Computer System (RadSat) demonstrated that commercial off-the-shelf FPGAs could be made radiation-tolerant through software-based fault mitigation, eliminating the need for expensive rad-hardened processors.

PI: Brock LaMeres, Montana State University. Co-lead: GSFC.

SST scope: Matured a radiation-tolerant computer system using COTS FPGAs with triple modular redundancy, configuration scrubbing, and error detection/correction. The approach yields space-computing performance that improves upon rad-hard processors at a fraction of the cost.

Flight: RadSat-g (3U CubeSat) selected by NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) in 2015. Launched on Cygnus CRS-9 to ISS, deployed July 13, 2018 via JEM airlock. Demonstrated on-orbit radiation tolerance in LEO.

Downstream — SST's strongest university-to-commercial pipeline:

Year Milestone Significance
2013–2016 SST RadSat project [91661] TRL 5→6, COTS FPGA mitigation
2018 RadSat-g ISS deploy Flight demonstration (TRL 9)
2020 Resilient Computing spinout LaMeres commercializes RadPC
2024 US Patent 11,966,284 LaMeres + Chris Major (former PhD student)
2024–2026 $2.78M federal awards to Resilient Computing NASA + other agency contracts
2025 RadPC ON THE MOON Blue Ghost 1 (Firefly Aerospace CLPS lander), launched Jan 14, 2025 on SpaceX Falcon 9. RadPC operating as expected — 3× more stable than rad-hard state-of-art

This is the only SST university project to produce both a commercial spinout AND a lunar landing. The 12-year arc from SST seed (2013) to lunar surface (2025) is the longest confirmed maturation pipeline in the SST portfolio.

NTRS: 1 citation (NTRS: 20150021840, LaMeres et al. 2015, filed at ARC).

Confidence: confirmed (ISS deployment verified via eoportal; Blue Ghost 1 landing confirmed via Bozeman Daily Chronicle, MSU press; Resilient Computing confirmed via company website; patent via USPTO).

High Rate X/S-band Communications: Seeding CU Boulder's CubeSat Program

PI: Scott Palo, CU Boulder. Co-lead: GSFC.

SST scope: Demonstrated an end-to-end X-band downlink and S-band uplink CubeSat communication system compatible with NASA's Near Earth Network (NEN). Balloon-to-ground demonstration validated the link budget.

Downstream — the MAXWELL lineage: - Palo's SST work matured the hardware design for NASA NEN-compatible CubeSat radios - This directly led to MAXWELL (Multiple Access Xband Wave Experiment Located in LEO), a 6U CubeSat with CU-developed X-band system + 1m deployable reflectarray antenna from MMA Design - MAXWELL launch: December 2026 on ELaNa 59 (also carries SWARM-EX, creating a double SST heritage launch) - MAXWELL is a winner of AFRL's University Nanosat Program 9 competition — DoD validation of SST-seeded tech - Partner institutions include Georgia Tech, Stanford, Olin College, and others

Palo's second SST project — Lunar PNT: - PI on SST project 106832 (2020–2024, TRL 3→6) — small satellite lunar communications and navigation system - NTRS: 20220006558 — "A Small Satellite Lunar Communications and Navigation System" (2022, co-authored with Penina Axelrad, Ryan Kingsbury, Nick Rainville, John Marino) - This second grant applied CubeSat radio expertise to cislunar PNT infrastructure, connecting to the LunaNet PNT stack

People chain: Palo's career arc spans two SST grants 7 years apart (2013 and 2020), moving from LEO CubeSat radios to lunar PNT infrastructure. He is now Associate Dean of Research at CU Boulder and has built a major CubeSat program there (MAXWELL, CU-E3, SWARM-EX). He is one of the confirmed people chains in the SST portfolio.

NTRS: 5 citations total for Palo, including: - 20220006558 — Lunar PNT system (2022) - 20220002303 — Lower-thermosphere-ionosphere probing with small spacecraft (2022)

Confidence: confirmed (CU Boulder website, AFRL UNP records, Gunter's Space Page, NTRS).

FEMTA: Alina Alexeenko's Three-Project SST Arc

The Film-Evaporation MEMS Tunable Array exploits micro-scale surface tension for simultaneous propulsion and thermal control. A single 1-watt unit provides 10 W cooling and thrust from a system smaller than 2 cm³.

PI: Alina Alexeenko, Purdue University. Lead org in TechPort: GSFC (NASA institutional partner).

SST scope: Demonstrated FEMTA concept at TRL 5. Water-based propellant, no pressurized tanks, no valves — just temperature-controlled evaporation through MEMS nozzle arrays.

Alexeenko's 3 SST projects: | Project | ID | Period | TRL | |---------|-----|--------|-----| | FEMTA (propulsion+thermal) | 91370 | 2013–2016 | 3→5 | | MEMS Picosat RCS | 91591 | 2015–2017 | 3→5 | | Distributed Attitude Control | 95540 | 2018–2020 | 3→5 |

All three reached TRL 5 and stopped — a textbook case of the Academic TRL Ceiling anti-pattern. Alexeenko is the only PI with 3 SST projects across the portfolio (tied with Roger Hunter on the program management side). Despite impressive MEMS innovation, none of the three technologies found a flight opportunity or industry bridge.

FO pipeline (session 14): Alexeenko's FEMTA work transitioned to Flight Opportunities for a Blue Origin suborbital test. This confirms the SST→FO pipeline but still no orbital flight.

NTRS: 2 publications: - 20150016069 — FEMTA factsheet - 20160007910 — MEMS Reaction Control and Maneuvering for Picosat Beyond LEO (Alexeenko, 2016, filed at ARC)

Confidence: confirmed (3 projects verified in TechPort, NTRS publications confirmed, FO transition confirmed).

Mini FTS: Spectrometer on a Chip

PI: John C. Allen, GSFC. The one GSFC project actually led by a GSFC researcher (not a university PI).

Developed a Fourier-Transform spectrometer on a chip for mid-infrared remote sensing. Eliminates moving parts (scan mirrors) of traditional FTS. Reached TRL 5 but no follow-on flight.

Confidence: confirmed (TechPort record). No visible downstream.

NTRS Summary

Project NTRS Citations Key NTRS IDs
RadSat 1 20150021840
Palo (comms + lunar PNT) 5 20220006558, 20220002303
FEMTA/Alexeenko 2 20150016069, 20160007910
Mini FTS 0 —
Total 8

GSFC's publication count is modest compared to JPL (69) or MSFC. This reflects GSFC's bridge role — the publications live at the university PIs' institutions, not at GSFC.

Institutional Character

GSFC's SST role was distinct from other centers:

Center Role Identity
ARC (16 projects) Mission operator + program home Sequential capability builder (swarm arc)
JPL (4 projects) Deep-space CubeSat pioneer High-ambition one-off missions
GSFC (4 projects) University bridge Enabling academic PIs with NASA institutional backing
JSC (6 projects) Rapid prototyping + AR&D Human-spaceflight-adjacent capabilities

GSFC's projects were overwhelmingly partner-university work: Purdue (Alexeenko), Montana State (LaMeres), CU Boulder (Palo), with Allen's Mini FTS as the only GSFC-internal project. This made GSFC the NASA institutional home for university SmallSat research — but unlike ARC, GSFC didn't build a cumulative in-house capability from these projects. The knowledge dispersed back to the universities.

The RadSat success is notable precisely because Montana State, not GSFC, continued the work. GSFC's contribution was the institutional backing and NASA center partnership that made the CubeSat Launch Initiative selection possible. The downstream — from SST seed to lunar surface in 12 years — is GSFC's strongest legacy in the portfolio, even though GSFC's role was enabler rather than executor.

Upcoming milestones: - MAXWELL launch (Dec 2026, ELaNa 59): CU Boulder's 6U CubeSat carrying Palo's SST-heritage X-band radio + MMA Design reflectarray. Same launch as SWARM-EX (another SST-connected mission).

Cross-References