We are happy to share that Zamna Space was selected for a NASA SBIR Phase I award under solicitation EXPAND.3.S26B (NASA Ames Research Center). The selection was announced on August 17, 2026.
The Phase I effort is on autonomous onboard health management for small spacecraft and distributed systems.
The full abstract from our Phase I proposal is included below.
Abstract
Distributed lunar, Martian, and deep-space missions face severe operational constraints, as significant communication latency and high operator-to-spacecraft ratios prevent real-time ground intervention. Under these conditions, current spacecraft fault-management systems fall short; they rely on pre-programmed rules and isolated, per-vehicle diagnostics that limit their ability to identify unknown faults or distinguish local hardware failures from fleet-wide environmental disturbances like geomagnetic storms. These limitations become critical when autonomous constellations operate beyond continuous ground supervision.
To solve this, Zamna Space Inc. proposes a distributed onboard health-management architecture for autonomous spacecraft constellations. Phase I will develop and evaluate a magnetometry-centric implementation of a three-tier onboard health-management architecture—combining deterministic fault detection, telemetry-based anomaly analysis, and bounded onboard diagnostic reasoning—to establish a managed, high-fidelity scope for validating the core framework. This system enables spacecraft to compare compact health summaries across the constellation to determine whether anomalous behavior reflects an isolated hardware issue or a shared environmental event.
The effort will deliver a CONOPS, a multi-spacecraft simulation environment, a prototype deterministic detection layer, telemetry-analysis pipeline, bounded reasoning framework, and a constellation-level coordination protocol validated across representative fault scenarios. Phase I emphasizes SWaP-compatible architectures suitable for ESPA-class spacecraft and establishes quantitative Key Performance Parameters for Phase II hardware maturation. Target markets include NASA exploration missions, commercial satellite constellations, and defense operators managing distributed autonomous spacecraft systems.
We are hiring a second technical member and one of two named key personnel on the award. See the open role.