The European Space Agency (ESA) is using SpaceWire on:

  • GAIA, a very high resolution star-mapper;
  • ExoMars, a semi-autonomous Mars surface rover;
  • BepiColombo Mercury Polar Orbiter;
  • Sentinel 1, a pair of imaging radar satellites that will provide an all-weather, day-and-night imaging capability for a range of services including, sea-ice mapping, oil-spill monitoring, ship detection, land-surface movement, and disaster management.
  • Sentinel 2, a high-resolution, multi-spectral imaging mission which will support operation land monitoring and the emergency services.
  • Sentinel 3, a pair of satellites that will provide operational marine and land Earth Observation services using optical and microwave instruments.
  • Sentinel 5, series of Earth observation satellites.

NASA is using SpaceWire on:

  • SWIFT a gamma-ray burst observatory, in orbit and making scientific discoveries since 2004;
  • Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, currently in orbit around the moon taking very high resolution images of the surface (these images all travel over SpaceWire twice on-board the spacecraft);
  • LCROSS the mission that was deliberately crashed into the south pole of the moon and discovered ice there;
  • James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) an infra-red telescope which will be the biggest satellite ever launched with the exception of the international space station, when specifying a data-handling network for JWST NASA did an extensive survey of suitable technologies and chose SpaceWire;
    Magnetospheric Multi-Scale mission which is a multi-satellite mission that will explore the Earth’s magnetosphere;
  • GOES-R, a series of geostationary Earth Observation spacecraft, due to replace the USA’s current weather satellites.
  • Plug and Play Sat (PnPSat), which is pioneering rapid assembly, integration and deployment technology for tactical and disaster monitoring applications.
  • TacSat, which is part of the USA operationally responsive space (ORS) programme. Both TacSat and PnPSat chose SpaceWire for their on-board data-handling networks, in competition with other space and terrestrial technologies.

Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency (JAXA) has adopted SpaceWire for all of their spacecraft that require moderate or high data rates, including:

  • BepiColombo Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, which is a companion to the ESA BepiColombo spacecraft and will measure the magnetosphere of Mercury;
  • ASTRO-H, an X-ray telescope being designed to explore the structure and evolution of Universe;
  • SPRINT-A, which is a small satellite that will observe the atmosphere of Venus, Mars and Jupiter in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) from Earth orbit, at an altitude of about 1,000 kilometers;
  • ASNARO is a Japanese optical high-resolution Earth imaging mission;
  • NEXTAR, which is the one of the first spacecraft to be designed to use SpaceWire for all of its on-board communications and is being built by NEC.

RosCosmos the Space Agency of the Russian Federation have recently approved SpaceWire for use on their spacecraft, regarding SpaceWire as a key technology for their future space missions.

SpaceWire is also being used in China, India, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Argentina, Canada, and by the space agencies of individual European member states. A number of commercial spacecraft, including Inmarsat, are also using SpaceWire.