THE INTELLIGENCE LAYER
Solo is our spacecraft intelligence model, working on top of AstroForge's existing deterministic, physics-based flight software. It monitors the spacecraft’s state over time, detects off-nominal behavior, determines how to respond, and coordinates the appropriate onboard systems to act.
THE CHAIN
SENSE
Solo ingests information about the spacecraft and its systems, accessing far more data than could ever be downlinked to Earth. That gives it a fuller picture of what's happening onboard than any ground operator could have.
DECIDE
Solo sits above the spacecraft's existing systems as an intelligence layer, without replacing the physics-based software and deterministic algorithms underneath. It uses that fuller picture to make more informed decisions than a human operator could.
ACT
Solo flies the spacecraft without ground updates, completing its mission without a single command from Earth, and determines if any subsystem is in an off-nominal state. It coordinates the spacecraft's onboard functions in real time during flight.
FEATURES
FULL Autonomy
Spacecraft autonomy isn't new. NASA's Deep Space 1 demonstrated it decades ago, and OSIRIS-REx's final descent was autonomous. But that autonomy has always been limited to specific functions or mission phases, with humans still responsible for the mission and ready to intervene during anomalies. Solo moves that decision-making onboard.
Built on Four Years of TESTING
AstroForge has assembled a team of mathematicians and physicists working on some of the hardest problems in autonomous deep-space navigation, backed by a world-class in-house testing operation - full-scale thermal testing, radio testing in an anechoic chamber, thruster hot-fire, and hardware-in-the-loop testing - generating the data needed to continually iterate on and improve Solo.
BUILT FOR DEEP SPACE
The farther a spacecraft travels from Earth, the more it faces common constraints: limited comms, expensive ground stations, and the need for specialized mission operating teams. This becomes difficult to scale as the number of spacecraft operating in deep space increases. That’s why Solo moves decision making to the spacecraft itself.
Removing the Cost of
Dependence on Earth
Ground operations --which include time-on-dish, telemetry analysis, and commanding the spacecraft - account for nearly a third of AstroForge's overall mission cost.