Breakthrough modeling solution enables operators to collaboratively prep, fly, review future, current missions
Tucson, AZ/Logan UT – August 5, 2024 – Ascending Node Technologies (ANT), the leading developer of collaborative mission management solutions, today announced the commercial availability of its Spaceline® 3D mission visualization software, currently providing continuous flight planning simulations for NASA’s $20 million Aspera small-sat UV astrophysics mission set to explore nearby galaxies from LEO beginning in 2026.
Spaceline is an affordable web-based suite of data analysis and visualization tools designed to help today’s dispersed mission teams effectively collaborate in real time during every mission phase, from design through live operations and post-mission review. At $40,000 per year, Spaceline is a relatively small investment that enables multi-million-dollar missions to dramatically boost operational accuracy, efficiency, and productivity by automating and streamlining many of the manual, cumbersome calculations and processes still in use today.
Authorized Spaceline users can access the cutting-edge platform on their laptop or cell phone to share, dissect, and review precision data-based simulations with ultra-high-resolution renderings that update with ever-changing mission conditions. Mission teams can see their actual flight path during the planning process to pinpoint optimal trajectories and data collection windows for scheduling downlinks or observations.
Spaceline also enables operators to see and identify landmark objects their spacecraft cameras will observe during both simulated planning and actual mission phases in space. Gigabytes of detailed preparation and flight data are captured by robust, secure Spaceline servers, offering critical on-the-fly results anytime.
“Spaceline enables operators to clearly see how their mission will perform in the future so they can make the necessary flight adjustments before launch and during flight,” explained Sanford Selznick, Chief Software Architect, Ascending Node Technologies. “The platform provides an automated flight-proven blueprint that does your mission math, eliminates cumbersome manual processes, and allows your full team to collaborate effortlessly in real time during key planning phases and actual flight operations. That’s a game changer for missions of any size. Collaboration, security, and affordability are the breakthrough differentiators that enable Spaceline users to make rapid informed decisions based on key insights from a flight-qualified platform with unprecedented capabilities.”
NASA has already called Spaceline a critical asset of its Aspera galaxy exploration mission, and Ascending Node Technologies is in discussions with operators planning a broad range of exciting missions ranging from Earth observation to orbital debris.
“Our University of Arizona space team is thrilled to be working with Ascending Node Technologies and leading NASA’s Aspera astrophysics mission that seeks to solve the mysteries surrounding how galaxies evolve and obtain fuel for the formation of stars. Spaceline is a mission-critical tool that’s enabling us to simulate, collaborate, and walk through multiple precision iterations of the operation years before we launch,” said Carlos Vargas, University of Arizona astronomer and Aspera Mission Principal Investigator.
Spaceline was born from NASA’s historic and complex OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Regolith Explorer) asteroid sample collection mission that traveled to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu to retrieve rock and dust samples as part of a seven-year exploration.
By the time asteroid samples were delivered to Earth in 2023, a trio of OSIRIS-REx engineers and scientists had founded Ascending Node Technologies and revolutionized the space industry’s slow, siloed, costly, and often manual data processing practices. Multiple NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts have funded the five-year development of the next-generation, ITAR-capable Spaceline visualization app.
NASA SBIR contracts have also funded later enhancements of the Spaceline visualization software platform. The latest SBIR award has enabled the expansion of Spaceline’s collaborative functionality, allowing hundreds of users to simultaneously analyze, iterate, and discuss mission simulations and flight data in real time.
The Ascending Node Technologies team of Chief Software Architect Sanford Selznick, Chief Scientist Carl Hergenrother, and Chief Aerospace Engineer John Kidd was formed in 2018 during the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample-return mission. The University of Arizona played an important role in the OSIRIS-REx mission and has helped foster a number of new space companies, including Ascending Node Technologies. The company’s three principals have heritage on successful missions in space and more than a half century in combined space industry experience, developing, planning, and operating interplanetary exploration missions.
About Ascending Node Technologies
Founded in 2018, Ascending Node Technologies, LLC develops collaborative space mission management solutions and technologies that allow mission operators and their widely dispersed teams to collaborate in real time to increase operational efficiencies and flight plan accuracy and reduce mission risk. The company’s flagship solution, Spaceline®, is a revolutionary web-based interactive 3D visualization platform that leverages telemetry-based data to provide precision flight planning at every mission stage. Spaceline is designed to support virtually any space mission imaginable, including space situational awareness and collision avoidance initiatives, orbital debris removal, deep space exploration, and lunar and cislunar development, to name a few. For more information about the Spaceline visualization platform and Ascending Node Technologies, visit www.ascendingnode.tech.
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