Space LEGO's Are REAL! // Space NEWS // July 24th, 2025

SpaceX launched the Tracers mission recently for NASA, a pair of spacecraft studying the magnetosphere and the sun's interactions with Earth's magnetic field. While interesting in and of itself, I'm actually more interested in another spacecraft that flew along as a ride share with the Tracers mission, and that's the Athena Epic spacecraft. This spacecraft is another mission for NASA and for Noah, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It's flying a spare unused instrument to study Earth's weather. What's interesting to me about this mission is the satellite bus, normally a boring thing, but it's made out of these space Lego pieces. These are little satellites that are a self-contained unit that have everything that you need. You have computers on board. You have guidance and navigation. You have a gyroscope. You have solar powers. You have batteries. You have a little bit of propulsion. Not a lot, but a little bit. It's actually a little hard to find information on how much propulsion, but it does have some. But most importantly, it has docking ports. Little easy to snap together pieces. There's five ports on each one of these things so they can be connected together to make even bigger spacecraft. So they might be something that's just a little bit more capable than a cubat. By the way, they have communication on board as well. So something that would be a little bit more capable than a cubat to start off with can be connected together and combine their abilities and combine their powers together, so to speak, to become a bigger, more powerful satellite that can be designed around just a specific instrument. like the case of this Athena Epic spacecraft that had a spare leftover instrument from another program and still fly that instrument and get data out of it on a much much cheaper platform than a traditional satellite platform that would attach this instrument to it. I just think the idea of space Legos is a super cool idea. And apparently their interfaces that they have can share everything between them. They have wireless connectivity for communication in order to work together that way. But apparently there's connections on their snap together interfaces that would allow for them to exchange power with each other and even exchange a little bit of fuel with each other for their propulsion. This is all developed by a company called Nova Works that has been around for a while. They've been around since 2011. But I think that their idea is just brilliant. They call these things highs or highly integrated satlets. They also call them sleos or space legos. So, we're just going to call them space Legos. Each one of these space Legos has five docking ports or interfaces. Four that are stationary and one that's actually on a rotating carousel. And if nothing is docked there, then it can actually be used as its gyroscope or as an actuator to connect say the solar panels and have them be suntracking solar panels to follow the movement of the sun and spin on that rotating carousel. Somehow they have figured out how on these little ports to be able to transfer not just power, fuel, and data, but thermal as well, so that they can mitigate heat if it gets generated in a spacecraft. And because they're LEGO pieces, you can fit them together in all sorts of crazy configurations with different types of instruments, different types of missions, or possibly have multiple spacecraft that eventually link up together and become a super satellite. Amongst some of their crazy ideas to have all sorts of interesting satellites, they also are talking about using them to either extend old satellites or to harvest parts from old satellites. That would be a completely different type of spacecraft with robotic arms that would say take antenna dishes or synthetic aperture radars from old satellites. The instrument still works, but the satellite itself is out of fuel or out of power because its batteries have, you know, gone way past their warranty. In any case, they could take some of those instruments from old satellites and use these satlets, these space Legos to make a new mission using that instrument. Even if you have a functioning spacecraft that is just otherwise out of fuel, if you don't have enough gyroscopes or if your gyroscopes have failed, you could add a couple of these space legos, arrange them in such a way, and have their carousels spinning so that it would be a new type of gyroscope to control your big spacecraft with. Kind of like the Don Pettit experiment where he taped together a bunch of CD players to create a little gyroscope. Gyroscopes keep you stable, and this might be a quick way to be able to add that capability if you've lost it or didn't have it in the first place. The whole idea with these is that once you have the pieces, it's supposed to be easy to assemble. Their first test of this in space was a mission in 2015 where they sent a couple of these pieces to the International Space Station where they were then assembled by an astronaut inside the station and then eventually put into an airlock and deployed by the Canada arms system. This mission was called simple and unfortunately even though it was easy to put together and deploy for some reason it didn't actually power up after it was deployed. So they had to do a new test. That test came in the form of their excite mission and also their pods mission. Both of which took place in 2018 and were completely successful and proved out that the systems worked in space, would communicate with each other, would share power with each other and share propulsion with each other. So the system works. Real space Legos work. So, here's hoping that with this most recent mission, Athena Epic, that everything goes well and it's able to perform its mission as it's intended. What I don't know yet is how expensive these are and what they're charging NASA to do these. In the case of Athena Epic, it was actually moved to three different rockets. They had to reconfigure the space Legos into different configurations each time it got reassigned to a different rocket to launch it. So even before it reaches space, it's kind of an impressive capability that they're able to reconfigure the satellite depending on their needs, like adjusting for weight so that the center of gravity will be the same or at least what it's intended to be for ride share missions as it interacts with other spacecraft before they get deployed. Making sure that your rocket isn't going to be offbalance and will fly straight. This company claims that they can be reconfigured once they're on orbit as well without being able to find hard data on how much propulsion capability they actually have or how much fuel they have. I imagine not much. I don't think that they're able to do normal docking procedures and would have to be reconfigured with some sort of robotic arm. Nothing wrong with that. It just means that you need some sort of robotic servicing spacecraft in order to reconfigure these. Even though there's not a whole lot of interest in the space industry for satellite servicing missions, the capability does exist. And I think it's a really impressive way that we should be moving forward. And with these space Lego pieces, these satlets, it makes me wonder if there is a future out there for salvaging components from old satellites and repurposing them for new missions or linking them together and creating some sort of super satellite that has capabilities that their originals never intended for. This company, NovaWorks, has not only worked with NASA and Noah, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They also worked with DARPA in the past and are working with the United States Space Force. Currently, they've been awarded contracts in the millions of dollars to do these demonstrations that they've done so far. So, it doesn't exactly it doesn't exactly tell me how much it would be per satlet for one of these things. Well, maybe it could if I could find the particular contract and see all the line item details, but unfortunately I haven't been able to find that by the time of this filming. I would imagine that with the capabilities that they're marketing for these things, it's a lot more expensive than a cubat. But it makes me wonder if this could be a replacement for cubats and be the future of small satellites, something that would be able to link together and have universality with each other. And of course, they have their own proprietary hardware. So even if we were to go out to old satellites, we would need to have some sort of way of connecting their interface so that these small satellites could then dock to it in whatever configuration they're in. So getting that piece there is going to need an advanced robotic servicing mission or maybe even a human in the loop, some sort of human salvaging mission. So, I don't know. Maybe this company has figured out a way to easily connect their interfaces to old hardware and be able to have it communicate with and share power with their little mini space Lego satellites. I don't know. Unless these things are horribly expensive, I think that this is a brilliant idea and would love to start seeing some sort of culture being adopted of having some sort of universality or commonality. Even if it's not this company's interfaces, their docking ports for satellites, even if it's some other company, this is a good idea and should be the direction that we're moving forward in. Just like with Cubats, how everything is standardized and no matter who you're buying parts from, you're essentially going to have everything fit and work together with maybe a few minor problems, but there's standards and universality for a reason. And maybe these are the new version or something like it that can dock together, share their capabilities with each other, be arranged in all sorts of interesting configurations for new types of spacecraft, and take on some pretty hardcore missions. You could even be doing interplanetary stuff with this. I mean, shoot, they even had one old render of a space-based solar power satellite that is made out of hundreds of these things, if not thousands of these things. I'm sure that they would love that as a company to get orders for hundreds of them. But even just for a handful, anywhere from six to 12, you can be doing some really interesting things that might still cost you millions of dollars, but would otherwise cost you hundreds of millions of dollars just to build the satellite. So, all I'm saying is that this is a good idea. And having something that can do just a simple communications, simple cubat mission for a university or do something really exotic if you stack enough of them together. and being able to just put them in any configuration you want. Sure, you still have some limits, but it's a space Lego and is an easily put together type of system is what they claim. So, I love this and I think that this idea is really fascinating. As for the company Nova Works themselves, it's great to see them flying after having them been around for a couple of years now. And I hope that everything goes well for this Athena Epic mission so that their ideas are adopted and they get more business. And I really really hope that we can figure out a way whether it's through one company or multiple companies of adopting some sort of standard, some sort of like a USB standard so that we can have all sorts of interesting missions in the future that we didn't intend for by repurposing or salvaging or just connecting together a bunch of interesting missions to create super satellites that have just about every capability. ility you could want. Let me know what you think about this idea and what you would do with it if you had an unlimited budget and had access to these space Legos. What would you build with these? Thank you very much for watching this video. Be sure to like and subscribe if you haven't already and hit the bell so that you're notified anytime that we upload a new video. And consider becoming a member of tomorrow for as little as a dollar a month to help us create more content and to get access to exclusive content as well. My name is Space Mike. I'm a big fan of real space Legos. And until the next time I see you guys, keep moving onwards and upwards. And don't forget, add Astra to the stars.