Brian Douglas, Director of System Engineering, Asteroid Mining Division, reports on the Arkyd-6 probe as a technical evolution of our Arkyd-3 spacecraft. Its avionics, software, structure, and mechanisms are all improved from the previous generation, and we’re in the process of improving it once again for the Arkyd-301 platform. But more than just a technical advancement, Arkyd-6 allowed us to evolve our design and engineering philosophies as well. Using the lessons learned from Arkyd-6, we have kept the design philosophies that worked really well for us and changed or abandoned the ones that didn’t.
An important idea that Arkyd-6 reinforced is that they don’t have to limit the company to using parts that were designed specifically for space. We have the facility and expertise in-house to qualify commercial hardware through modification and test. For example, Arkyd-6 has one of the first commercially available mid-wave infrared instruments for use in space. They adopted a commercial instrument designed for use on Earth, replaced some of the electronics, modified the structure, and then re-tested it for the space environment; this opened up a huge arsenal of commercial products at a cost that typically is not available for deep-space missions.
They are a small company that is tackling very large problems and in order to solve those problems they don’t have to reinvent the wheel for every component on their spacecraft. Instead, their philosophy is to use available technology that meets their purpose as well as identify the key technologies that they do need to develop in order to enable commercial access to deep space.
The philosophy that had the most positive outcome was to have a single team member own a product from inception of the idea all the way through operation. And rather than an assembly line, the engineer is involved at all stages, and that person moves along with the product and understands everything that happens to it. With this idea of ownership, each of them has a sense of pride about the work they have accomplished by the time they are operating the mission. This type of ownership of their work is something they have brought forward in how they have structured the team for the next spacecraft design. It not only creates a better product in the end, but it also creates a stronger engineering team.
With design philosophies like these, they have set up their small team to tackle the next extraordinary engineering challenge, building commercial deep-space spacecraft.
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