SpaceQuest, Ltd. (also known as AAC SpaceQuest) is a spacecraft components and engineering company located in
Fairfax, Virginia
The City of Fairfax ( ), colloquially known as Fairfax City, Downtown Fairfax, Old Town Fairfax, Fairfax Courthouse, FFX, or simply Fairfax, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. At the 2010 census the p ...
, which focuses on the operations of small satellites.
The company designs, develops, constructs, launches and operates
microsatellites
A microsatellite is a tract of repetitive DNA in which certain DNA motifs (ranging in length from one to six or more base pairs) are repeated, typically 5–50 times. Microsatellites occur at thousands of locations within an organism's genome. ...
and spacecraft components. SpaceQuest qualifies its components for use in space by flying them on its own satellites. They also operate a fleet of low earth orbiting satellites, which are used for remote monitoring as well as tracking the location and status of large vessels at sea.
SpaceQuest's customers include US and foreign universities, NASA, the US Air Force, the Canadian Space Agency, commercial aerospace companies, and foreign developers of microsatellites.
Some of their projects include:
*
FalconSAT
FalconSAT is the United States Air Force Academy's (USAFA) small satellite engineering program. Satellites are designed, built, tested, and operated by Academy cadets. The project is administered by the USAFA Space Systems Research Center und ...
3 & 5, satellites developed by cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
*
AprizeSat
AprizeSat is an American micro- satellite platform for low Earth orbit communications satellites. It is marketed as a low-cost solution, with a claimed cost of per satellite for a 24-to-48-satellite constellation. , twelve spacecraft based on t ...
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10 commercial communications satellites for SpaceQuest
* ExactView 6,7
*
AO-51
AMSAT-OSCAR 51 or AO-51 is the in-orbit name designation of a now defunct (following battery failure) Low Earth orbit, LEO amateur radio satellite of the OSCAR series; formerly known as ECHO, built by AMSAT. It was launched on June 29, 2004 from B ...
,
amateur radio satellite
An amateur radio satellite is an artificial satellite built and used by amateur radio operators. It forms part of the Amateur-satellite service. These satellites use amateur radio frequency allocations to facilitate communication between amate ...
.
*
Genesis I
''Genesis I'' is an experimental space habitat designed and built by the private American firm Bigelow Aerospace and launched in 2006. It was the first module to be sent into orbit by the company, and tested various systems, materials and te ...
and
Genesis II, inflatable space habitats
Bigelow Aerospace
Bigelow Aerospace is an American aeronautics and outer space technology company which manufactures and develops expandable space station modules. Bigelow Aerospace was founded by Robert Bigelow in 1998, and is based in North Las Vegas, Nevada ...
.
* Thea and Brio, launched in December 2018 on Spaceflight's
SSO-A
SHERPA is a commercial satellite dispenser developed by Andrews Space, a subsidiary of Spaceflight Industries,