Aegis Aerospace Selected as Winner of Universal Payload Interface Challenge

Aegis Aerospace Inc. has been selected as a winner of NASA’s TechLeap Prize for the Universal Payload Interface Challenge (UPIC). NASA challenged industry and academia to develop an interface system that can easily integrate diverse payloads onto a wide range of flight vehicles. The TechLeap Prize seeks to rapidly identify, develop, and flight test space technologies through a series of challenges that each address a specific technology need for NASA and the nation.

Aegis Aerospace developed the Easy-to-use Payload Interoperable Integration Carrier, or EPIIC, to meet this challenge by leveraging our successful flight hardware and integration service capabilities. The EPIIC enables simple, rapid and interchangeable integration to a wide variety of atmospheric and suborbital flight vehicles and spacecraft. Aegis Aerospace expects to have the flight-qualified system ready for purchase and use by late 2025.

“Using our Space Testing as a Service (STaaS) business model as a baseline, we developed a modular, flight-ready universal payload interface,” stated Vice President of Systems Development Services, Matt Carter. “We are thankful for this win and excited to partner with NASA to build EPIIC to simplify and reduce the costs of integrating space experiments.”

For more on the NASA TechLeap Prize, visit https://www.nasa.gov/stmd-flight-opportunities/access-flight-tests/nasa-techleap-prize-information/.