Adapting for a rapidly evolving space environment requires agile and responsive methods to adding innovative capabilities that support mission needs. Typically, adding satellite capabilities in-orbit requires delivering new payloads to meet those needs—and the costs and time to get them there.

The Aerospace Corporation is pioneering a new approach to payload provisioning that leverages the ability to reassign spacecraft payloads with advanced software and processing, endowing existing hardware with new or enhanced capabilities that support mission needs.

“Massless payloads are an elixir for not letting better become the enemy of good enough,” said Peter Cunningham, lead for the massless payload program office at Aerospace. "The mindset of massless payloads is agile response, and the ability to leverage available resources to give yourself every possible advantage for a desired outcome.”

Dr. Steven Lewis, technical director for the massless payload program office at Aerospace, first conceived the concept in late-2020 during a cold call he made to a commercial space company. After a weekend of coding, he developed the first “massless” payload pathfinder prototype and successfully demonstrated the ability to use existing, on-orbit spacecraft hardware to detect and characterize threats.