The Universal Payload Integration Challenge is a NASA TechLeap Prize challenge to advance the development of flight-ready universal payload interfaces that enable easy integration of diverse space payloads into various flight vehicles. NASA’s Flight Opportunities program invited applicants to submit interfaces that facilitate the operations and safety of disparately designed and developed payloads and ensure they function across a variety of flight vehicles.
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The Easy-to-Use Payload Interoperable Integration Carrier (EPIIC) is a 1U-12U modular experiment and payload adapter designed around the CubeSat construct, enabling simple, rapid and interchangeable integration onto Flight Opportunities vehicles and lunar landers. The design optimizes mass and volume, and leverages spaceflight-proven hardware.
Ecoatoms’ Apparatus for Nominal Integration with Minimal Adaptations (ANIMA) is a three-part solution consisting of an interchangeable adaptor on the side of the vehicle, a universal connector, and an on-board computer that is designed to take payloads from suborbital to lunar with minimal adaptations.
The low-cost and student-developed Software-Defined Payload Interface (SDPI) leverages prior successful flight engineering experience at UCLA. The key enabling technology is the use of the SmartFusion2 system-on-a-chip, which combines a low-power ARM processor with an FPGA, allowing the customer to define the digital and power interfaces via software.