Pushing the Boundaries of Rapid Production of Spacecraft: Flight Results from NearSpace Launch’s TROOP and ThinSat Platforms

June 1, 2025

NearSpace Launch Inc. (NSL), a privately held and fully U.S.-owned aerospace company, is actively redefining the boundaries of responsive spaceflight through its development and deployment of the Train Rapid on Orbit Payload (TROOP) and ThinSat platforms. Over the past decade, NSL has launched more than 100 small satellites and over 900 flight systems and subsystems into orbit. NSL’s satellites have been part of launches operated by Astra, Atlas, Delta, Firefly Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX among others.

Headquartered in Upland, Indiana, NSL is currently the largest small satellite manufacturer in the midwestern region of the U.S., uniquely positioned to address urgent national needs for rapid space access and technology testing.

The company’s co-founders, Dr. Henry (Hank) Voss and Jeff Dailey, bring more than 70 years of combined expertise in satellite development, space weather instrumentation, and aerospace systems engineering. NSL gained its roots from Taylor University, where it helped launch Indiana’s first satellite, TSAT.

NSL’s engineering approach to designing and manufacturing satellites and satellite subsystems is rooted in simplicity, efficiency, iteration, and mission reliability. The company’s hybrid integrated development process enables it to deliver complete satellite systems in just six to nine months far shorter than the traditional multi-year process seen across the aerospace industry. This rapid turn-around is achieved through in-house manufacturing of core subsystems, including satellite buses, communications payloads, and power systems. This vertical integration not only accelerates production but also strengthens supply chain resilience and quality control, ensuring that components are tailored to mission-specific requirements.

Rather than adopting a rigid model-based systems engineering (MBSE) framework, NSL incorporates practical MBSE elements selectively to support streamlined design, testing, and iteration. Leveraging the use of MBSE is especially significant today, as the Department of Defense and other U.S. government agencies are transitioning to the use of digital engineering and model-based approaches to acquisitions of new satellites and subsystems, and away from the paperbased manual structures that have guided their acquisition process for decades.

Top: An overview of the individual components and systems featured on NSL’s ThinSats. Bottom: NSL’s ThinSats come in different shapes and sizes, as shown here. (Image: NSL)

NSL’s pragmatic approach to MBSE emphasizes flexibility and responsiveness to customer needs, aligning well with government programs that demand rapid development cycles and real-world adaptability. This philosophy is especially evident in NSL’s platform architecture, where simplicity in design directly translates to reduced failure modes and improved in-orbit performance.

The TROOP platform represents a flagship example of NSL’s innovation in hosted payload services. TROOP enables the integration of multiple customer payloads aboard a standardized small satellite bus, dramatically lowering the cost and complexity of on-orbit experimentation. Each mission under the TROOP banner includes end-to-end services — payload integration, licensing, regulatory coordination, launch, and operations — offered as a bundled solution. The most recent mission, TROOP-F2, launched aboard a SpaceX vehicle in August 2024, further demonstrates the maturity and versatility of the platform.

TROOP-F2 is a 6U free-flyer that incorporates several key technologies developed and tested by NSL. The satellite hosts three EyeStar S4 transceivers with distinct antenna and pointing configurations to evaluate performance across varied link geometries. It also includes a suite of advanced space weather sensors developed in partnership with NASA, under the Space Weather Array Prompt Experiment (SWAP-E) initiative.

These instruments include low- and medium-energy particle detectors, a total integral dose radiation sensor, and a plasma probe, all optimized for low-power and compact form factors. In addition to these science payloads, TROOP-F2 also carries multiple next-generation NSL-developed bus systems, including the GPS unit, a new attitude determination and control system (ADCS), enhanced power electronics, rad-hardened solar cells, and advanced onboard processors.

Payloads onboard TROOP missions are integrated using a standardized interface control document (ICD) and a TTL or RS422 Serial UART emulator, allowing for plug-and-play compatibility and rapid turnaround. Each payload is assigned dedicated access to shared bus resources in a time-sharing model, with hardware isolation to prevent fault propagation. This configuration allows multiple customers to conduct independent experiments aboard the same spacecraft, while still meeting data security and operational integrity requirements.

NearSpace Launch EyeStar S-4 data showing connectivity coverage for satellites transmitting data through the Iridium Next constellation. NSL specializes in uninterrupted global satellite communication hardware by leveraging existing commercial satellite-to-satellite networks. (Image: NearSpace Launch)

In addition to TROOP, NSL’s ThinSat program is expanding the design envelope for compact, modular satellite architectures. ThinSats are ultra-thin spacecraft, typically ranging from 1/7U to ½U in volume, offering significant advantages in packing density, aerodynamics, and radiation shielding. The design of NSL’s ThinSats was inspired by several factors, including helping to lower the cost of using satellites for education and research at colleges and universities throughout the U.S.

Moreover, ThinSats were developed in response to the need for lower-cost satellites and constellations with miniaturized sensors for high performance (ease of assembly, maximize solar array surface area for power, aerodynamic for lower drag or for deorbit, ease of testing, robotic assembly, improved thermal, high radar cross-section, and new paradigms of string interconnections). NSL’s creation of the 5 cm on a side PocketQube and implementation of the ThinSat concept were used to inspire STEM education, to drastically reduce student satellite cost, launch cost to space and cycle time to orbit (launch every 6 months). These platforms can be flown individually or linked in multi-unit “strings” to share power, data, and redundancy. The Thin-Sat form factor supports modular mission profiles and allows for robotic assembly, enabling faster production and configuration for a wide variety of use cases.

A common element in both the TROOP-F2 and RAPSat-1 missions is the deployment of NSL’s new low-SWaP-C (Size, Weight, Power, and Cost) ADCS. This system relies exclusively on magnetorquers for actuation and supports a range of pointing modes including magnetic, solar, nadir, and velocity vector alignment. Designed to operate with minimal input from onboard computers, GPS, or ground stations, the ADCS supports autonomous spacecraft operation with highly efficient command and telemetry protocols. This low-bandwidth approach enables reliable attitude control even in constrained communication environments.

Communication reliability is a cornerstone of NSL’s operational infrastructure. To date, the company has achieved a 100 percent success rate for all flight-verified S3 and S4 radio systems. These communication subsystems provide robust telemetry downlinks and command uplinks, and are fully integrated into NSL’s secure mission operations console. This web-based platform allows customers to access real-time data, monitor incoming packets, issue commands, and receive alerts from both desktop and mobile devices — supporting responsive mission oversight and operational flexibility.

Through its development of the TROOP and ThinSat platforms, NSL is directly supporting the evolving requirements of defense, civil, and commercial space customers. By offering rapid, reliable, and affordable access to space for technology demonstration, environmental sensing, and communications testing, NSL is playing a critical role in modernizing space capabilities for the United States and its partners. The developments made through the launch of TROOP-F2 and RAPSat-1 illustrates the value of NSL’s engineering philosophy and integrated manufacturing strategy in enabling fast-paced innovation and national space resilience.

This article was written by Dr. Henry (Hank) Voss and Jeff Dailey, Matt Voss, and Jasmin Consales for Near Space Launch (Upland, IN). For more information, visit here .