Benzinga | Dec 17, 2021 09:02AM EST

Sidus Space Reports $1M Contract With NASA To Support Astra Program, Another Mission Helios

Sidus Space, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIDU), a Space-as-a-Service satellite company, today announced a contract with NASA to support the Astra program and another with Mission Helios, a space-based blockchain technology company, for space services with a combined value of $1 million.

For NASA's Advanced Space Technology Roadmapping Architecture (ASTRA) project, NASA's Autonomous Systems Lab (ASL) team will join Sidus Space to integrate and demonstrate for the first time, Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) derived autonomous operations in a spaceflight environment. The demonstration will provide the necessary flight heritage for an autonomous system development platform to be used throughout the Artemis project and beyond. ASTRA will infuse multiple new technologies, including an autonomous imaging system on a Sidus-built LizzieSat-1 satellite which will then be deployed from the International Space Station (ISS) using the SSIKLOPS deployer. The ASTRA imaging system will capture images of targets on Earth during predefined times to test autonomous functionally of conducting imaging system operations, capturing images of specific targets, and imaging system downlink and memory performance.

LizzieSat-1, currently manifested to launch late 2022, will validate the AES-developed autonomy software (NPAS) through on-orbit testing. The testing will evaluate the autonomous operation of the satellite imaging functions, assess the performance and behavior of the spacecraft power systems, and support the development, integration, testing, and operations of critical technologies for current and future Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) missions.

In addition to the ASTRA technologies aboard LizzieSat-1, Sidus Space will also provide launch and integration services for the ERC-20 token community, Mission Helios. As a decentralized space community, Helios plans to pioneer a new and innovative space-based blockchain technology that will mint satellite imagery through non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum blockchain.

Under the agreement, Sidus Space will provide launch and mission services to test the first-ever blockchain-based 1U (approximately 10 cm3) satellite imagery system aboard the multi-mission LizzieSat platform. LizzieSat-1 will launch and deploy from the International Space Station utilizing the SSIKLOPS deployer. The Helios imagery system will deploy from the ISS to provide a new era of satellite imagery. The imagery system that will encode Earth images into NFTs that can be bought, sold, and traded ensures the data collected from the system will be stored for the foreseeable future in an open-source and non-manipulative manner that can be freely used for expanding space research and exploration.