ALEXIS Retires after a 12-Year Career On Orbit
"The end of an era?"

Ashburn, VA – May 5, 2005

The ALEXIS satellite propelled AeroAstro into its leadership position in the world of small, low-cost spacecraft, which the company has maintained since 1989. Designed and built for a six-month mission, ALEXIS was on orbit for 12 years and was in continuous service from July 4, 1993 until its decommissioning on April 29, 2005.

With its primary missions long since successfully completed, Los Alamos National Laboratory kept ALEXIS in continuous operation to perform new, innovative science and technology research for the Laboratory. The highly successful program has received numerous citations and awards including the Los Alamos Project of the Year award; a model of ALEXIS hangs in the Los Alamos museum. Having extracted as much scientific value from ALEXIS as its capabilities and Los Alamos scientists could devise, and with its commercial NiCad C-cell batteries nearing exhaustion, well beyond projected lifetime projections, Los Alamos ceased regular ALEXIS operations last week to free facilities for other programs.

ALEXIS, the first satellite designed and built by AeroAstro, was the first of a new generation of high-performance small satellites. It combined high power, high data rates and highly precise attitude control with low development and operations cost. The satellite’s scientific packages included the Blackbeard radio experiment and the Array of Low-Energy X-ray Imaging Sensors telescopes, both developed at Los Alamos. The 45 kg (100 lb) spacecraft bus, built for less than $3M by AeroAstro, provided redundant digital computer systems, 1 Gbit solid state memory, attitude control and determination, 65 Watts of continuous power to the payloads and a 750 kbit/sec digital communications system. ALEXIS delivered about 1 CD of science data per day to Los Alamos for over 4,300 days. ALEXIS was built to allow periodic uplink of software upgrades to reconfigure itself on orbit to perform new operational modes.

Dr. Rick Fleeter, AeroAstro’s CEO, said, “While ALEXIS’ mission lifetime has ended, and the Los Alamos staff are toasting the 'end of an era,' I feel we are barely beginning the era of making space available and useful to a larger, more diverse and ultimately more demanding population. ALEXIS proved that people and organizations not previously able to do their own missions in space can now access the tremendous benefits of low-cost, rapid access to highly capable space resources through microspace technologies pioneered at AeroAstro.”

“ALEXIS’ legacy includes AeroAstro’s new programs to develop spacecraft that are assembled from 'smart' modules that self-configure themselves, in minutes, into highly capable, functional spacecraft without requirement of specialized aerospace expertise. AeroAstro is bringing this level of user-friendliness that we all take for granted in highly complex products ­ such as our automobiles, computers, cell phones and digital music players ­ to space. ALEXIS began the era of small, low-cost spacecraft, but its full potential for spontaneous, beneficial, economical use of space has barely begun, and the potential user community is still largely outside today’s space-faring population. We look forward to the next 12 years, when space will truly enter the era that ALEXIS’ tremendous success only began.”

About AeroAstro
AeroAstro, Inc. is a leader in innovative micro and nanospacecraft applications ­ including science, remote sensing, and communications ­ that open the space frontier to a larger and move varied customer base. AeroAstro is now leading the way to a new age of commercial space with self-configuring smart spacecraft elements that enable users to benefit from unprecedented access to space technology, and in new technologies for communications among very large user communities and large populations of diverse spacecraft and spacecraft elements. AeroAstro manufactures low-cost satellite systems and components, used in its own spacecraft and for spacecraft development in the US and abroad. NASA, the Air Force, commercial and university clients have employed AeroAstro throughout our 17-year history to achieve their goals and missions, and to get jobs done, in space, at sea, and on the ground.