May 18, 2020 the EZ-3 & 4 integrated flight system was successfully launched on the Atlas V Centaur along with the SBIRS Geo-5 primary spacecraft. This EZ-3 & 4 flight system was designed, tested, and integrated by Adaptive Launch Solutions (ALS) in partnership with Parsons Government Services under contract with the U.S. Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center’s Launch Enterprise Mission Manifest Office (MMO). The flight system wascomprised of an adaptor plate, isolators, and canisterized dispensers that contained the TDO-3 & 4 small satellites.
TDO-3 and TDO-4 were U.S. Government sponsored payloads that provided critical experimental data for U.S. Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center’s Launch Enterprise Mission Manifest Office (MMO) to increase space warfighting domain flexibility by enabling expedited integration and “swap-out” capability of multi-manifest satellites late in the integration process. The SBIRS GEO-5 mission demonstrated this “swap-out” capability by having two qualified and compatible multi-manifest satellites vehicles ready to be substituted, if needed, as late as two weeks prior to launch.
Considering the normal integration timeline for traditional satellites is approximately 24 months, this is just another example of how ALS working with the US Space Force is driving integration flexibility and responsiveness into the National Security Space planning process and rapidly delivering capability to the warfighter.
