The space industry is full of ideas especially from small organisations and academia, however due to the level of risk sadly those ideas don’t always get past the drawing board or beyond a lab. There has been a long list of great inventions and ideas that came out from academia and researchers but never got past some lab tests.
In technology development, we breakdown the maturity of technology into Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) (Figure 1). TRL range from TRL 1 where the technology is an idea or potential concept to TRL 9 where it is fully matured and deployed in the field performing it’s role. Academia and basic concepts are between TRL1-TRL4 and industrialising and full deployment is between TRL6-TRL9. TRL4-TRL6 is generally known as the “Valley of Death”. The Valley of Death is a very difficult part in development as the technology, idea or product may perform well in controlled conditions such as lab but the team or organisation are unable to replicate those performances in the field. Another hurdle is being able to scale the product, investment, financial viability or making the design feasible from a manufacturing standpoint.
Space is no different as the various subsystems of a new satellite may perform well here on Earth but once it reaches space it may fail. In addition due to the risky nature of space getting unproven technology can be difficult and expensive as it be deemed too ambitious, risky or not mature enough. Getting that heritage and flight proven status is the holy grail for new space technologies.
With experience from delivering projects that bridged the Valley of Death for manufacturing technologies in the automotive and aerospace sectors Wyrm Engineering can bring that expertise to your space applications. Whether it is an idea you have thought of we can support from initial concepts to aiding your team in getting that idea off the ground.
Wyrm Engineering can offer the following as part of it’s consultancy sevices:
- Mechanical engineering support of your satellite or spacecraft.
- Using our deployer as a test bed for your new product or prototype to obtain flight heirtage.
- Guide you through the various TRL stages to get your system into orbit.
- We can develop testing equipment that will enable your satellite to pass environmental qualification.
- Jigs and test rigs to improve manufacture, testing and assembly efficiency.
- We can carry out projects to identify new manufacturing techniques and carry out design for manufacturing in order to make it more viable from a manufacturing standpoint.
- Scaling down your system into a pocketqube and launching it into orbit to give it space heritage. We could then scale it up to a larger satellite like a cubesat or small sat thus de-risking larger systems with unproven technology.
- A collaborative partner for innovation projects. We are always open in taking part in multi party projects in advancing technology. These can be new materials, manufacturing techniques, mechanisms, in-orbit servicing, recycling and manufacture.
Get in touch by filling out the contact form below and together we can advanced space technology.
