SpaceDev is under contract to design and build the spacecraft, integrate the science payload, integrate the flight system to the launch vehicle, and operate the CHIPSat Observatory for one year. CHIPSat will be launched as a secondary payload on a Boeing Delta-II GPS replacement launch mission planned for early 2002.

Stan Dubyn, SpaceDev’s President and Chief Operating Officer said, "The CHIPSat Confirmation by NASA is a major vote of confidence and a testament to SpaceDev's ability to provide high quality and affordable flight systems, and is instrumental in further providing the groundwork for our future development of space."

Dr. Mark Hurwitz, UC Berkeley’s CHIPSat Principal Investigator, said, "The Confirmation Review panel at NASA HQ was very supportive of the CHIPS science mission and pleased to see the project move forward. The panel was impressed with Berkeley and SpaceDev's response to the "action items" of earlier reviews and cognizant of the satellite experience of key SpaceDev personnel.

The panel recognized that CHIPSat would be SpaceDev's first flight mission, and also noted the potential benefits of increased competition in the satellite field. They commented that CHIPSat was of the appropriate technical complexity for a first satellite and observed that a successful CHIPSat mission could put SpaceDev in an improved position to compete for larger projects in the future."

The CHIPSat team is currently testing and validating key components and subsystems developed by SpaceDev for the project. Testing has also begun with an innovative satellite command and control architecture using standard commercial network protocols.

This architecture, combined with SpaceDev's new HPX-21 Single Board MPC750 Flight Computer and MST-21 S-Band Transponder, allows the team to test critical functionality among the spacecraft and instrument processors over the Internet.

This includes the CHIPS science payload being developed in Virginia and at UC Berkeley, the Attitude Control & Determination System, and the Command & Data Handling Subsystem.

Jeff Janicik, SpaceDev’s CHIPSat Program Manager commented, "Our team did an outstanding job demonstrating the capability and elegant simplicity of our spacecraft design to NASA – while at the same time keeping up with their day-to-day design and development tasks, so as to maintain our delivery schedule."

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