The spacecraft was the first choice for the third flight of the Falcon 1 rocket in August 2008, but was not selected because it was not completed at that time.

[2] The primary mission is to demonstrate concepts of plug-and-play spacecraft development by successfully constructing and launching a spacecraft based on several technologies developed for that purpose.

[3] The design of the spacecraft centers on the idea of "smart" structural panels which are sealed aluminum panels which contain the necessary power and data electronics and harnessing.

The key to the design is AFRL's Space Plug-and-play Avionics (SPA) protocols and the Satellite Data Model (SDM) flight software.

The SPA family of protocols provides the standardized communications interface between the flight computer system of the spacecraft and the various avionics and sensors.