Silver Engineering | Deep Space Program Science Experiment (DSPSE)

The CLEMENTINE Deep Space Program Science Experiment (DSPSE) was the first space flight application of BMDO developed lightweight technologies to be used on a collaborative DoD/NASA mission. The 500-pound spacecraft was designed and built for BMDO by the Naval Research Laboratory to test lightweight sensor hardware that might be useful in ballistic missile defense. The DSPSE spacecraft was launched in early 1994 and initially inserted into a lunar orbit to map the moon. While mapping the moon,

The DSPSE Mission Operations Center (DMOC); SEI designed and built this fixed command and control center, being responsible for the ground telemetry and control architecture, room floor-plan, console and equipment designs and layouts, and connectivity of all components.

DSPSE Command and Encoder Unit; which enabled the DSPSE ground stations to send BPSK uplink commands to the Clementine spacecraft.

The Telemetry Data Switch; which was designed for the DMOC to provide for autonomous configurations of data signals within the operation center.

Clementine scanned the lunar terrain and returned to Earth nearly 2 million separate images. Clementine was the first U.S. spacecraft to return to the moon since the Apollo era. The following year after mapping the moon, data gleaned from the spacecraft's radar sweep of the moon's south pole region suggested the presence of water in the form of ice.

Silver Engineering, Inc. was involved from the beginning of the Clementine program helping to define the mission's ground system architecture. SEI designed and built;

Spacecraft Operations Center

Receive and Process Mission Engineering and Sciences Data

Mission Planning and Simulation

Central Communication Hub and Switch