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Fleet chart of smallsats currently in orbit
A researcher bends forward to reach into a 3D frame to manipulate the technology suspended in the center via mounting hardware and surrounded by black and red wires and a blue cable.
Team members install solar panels onto the CAPSTONE spacecraft – short for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment – at Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems Inc. in Irvine, California.

Small Spacecraft Systems Virtual Institute

The Small Spacecraft Systems Virtual Institute (S3VI) is chartered to perform the following: establish effective conduits for collaboration and the dissemination of information to increase overall awareness of NASA small spacecraft programs, opportunities and activities; capture and share best practices, emerging technology opportunities, and data; facilitate and execute special studies; and conduct external workshops and public events to share mission-enabling information with the small spacecraft community.

Learn More about Small Spacecraft Systems Virtual Institute

Small Satellite Missions Blog

NASA Evaluates Deployed Advanced Composite Solar Sail System

Read More about Small Satellite Missions Blog
A small spacecraft in Earth orbit deploys solar sail
Animation of NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System unfurling the sail in low Earth orbit.
Credit: NASA

S3VI small spacecraft artist rendering collage

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Quarterly Resource Brief

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Technology Tools and Resources

MarCO smallsat

SmallSat Reliability Initiative Knowledge Base

A comprehensive online tool that consolidates and organizes resources, best practices, and lessons learned from previous small satellite missions. This tool aims to improve mission confidence for future small spacecraft.

State-of-the-Art 2023

Small Spacecraft Technology State-of-the-Art Report

This report focuses on the spacecraft system in its entirety, provides current best practices for integration, and then presents the state of the art for each specific spacecraft subsystem.

A screen shot from a video shows a black page with thin colored lines in the shape of overlapping ribbons, with blue from the left meeting red from the right to describe a spacecraft orbit.

Space Mission Design Tools

A list of software tools found useful in the development of small spacecraft missions. This list is restricted to publicly available software from NASA or the Open Source community.

S3VI Information Search

Small Spacecraft Information Search

S3VI's federated search capability serves as an entry point to the SmallSat Parts On Orbit Now (SPOON) database and other NASA-internal and external databases to allow the public to search multiple databases for small spacecraft parts, technologies and conference proceedings.