Altair Pathfinder successfully deploying its solar arrays just after deploying from the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer on the iSS. Photo: NASA/Millennium Space Systems.

Millennium Space Systems announced the successful completion of its Altair Pathfinder mission objectives last week as the spacecraft reached its six-month milestone and 4,500 hours of successful operations in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Millennium Space recently received approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to continue to operate the mission for an additional six months, thereby allowing a full year of on-orbit performance monitoring and technology risk burndown to benefit the company’s government space customers.

“Since meeting our early mission objectives in June, the operations sustainment team has worked to selectively automate mission operations to improve lights-out operations,” said Griffith Russell, Millennium’s Altair Pathfinder mission director. Other longer-term mission objectives matured the satellite’s on-board guidance control algorithms and perfected loop back testing using a dedicated flight computer. According to Millennium, successful on-orbit life testing reinforces the benefits of its decision to vertically integrate the company three years ago. By designing and building in-house, Millennium maintains significantly better control over cost, schedule, performance and reliability, the company stated.