NASA awards contracts to six companies for its future orbital communications
Capitalism in space: NASA has awarded development contracts to six different companies to test the technology for providing the agency orbital communications for its manned missions, replacing the NASA-built TDRS satellite constellation.
In addition to SpaceX and Project Kuiper, the contractors include U.S.-based ventures representing Inmarsat, SES, Telesat and Viasat. Each venture will be required to complete technology development and in-space demonstrations by 2025 to prove that its system can deliver robust, reliable and cost-effective services — including the ability for new high-rate and high-capacity two-way links.
NASA would follow up by negotiating long-term contracts with multiple vendors to acquire services for near-Earth operations by 2030, while phasing out satellite communications systems owned and operated by the space agency.
Because NASA’s own station will likely be gone when these new in-space communications constellations become operational, their likely customers will not be NASA but the private space stations now under development. NASA is thus accepting responsibility for paying the cost for getting this communications need developed, for all the private companies. While the private space stations should eventually pay for using and building these constellations, it makes sense for NASA to get this started. No one company could likely afford or even be willing to pay the entire cost, and getting them all to work out an arrangement now would be difficult. NASA in turn can get it done now, and then later negotiate contracts with the private stations to pay for its construction and use.
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Capitalism in space: NASA has awarded development contracts to six different companies to test the technology for providing the agency orbital communications for its manned missions, replacing the NASA-built TDRS satellite constellation.
In addition to SpaceX and Project Kuiper, the contractors include U.S.-based ventures representing Inmarsat, SES, Telesat and Viasat. Each venture will be required to complete technology development and in-space demonstrations by 2025 to prove that its system can deliver robust, reliable and cost-effective services — including the ability for new high-rate and high-capacity two-way links.
NASA would follow up by negotiating long-term contracts with multiple vendors to acquire services for near-Earth operations by 2030, while phasing out satellite communications systems owned and operated by the space agency.
Because NASA’s own station will likely be gone when these new in-space communications constellations become operational, their likely customers will not be NASA but the private space stations now under development. NASA is thus accepting responsibility for paying the cost for getting this communications need developed, for all the private companies. While the private space stations should eventually pay for using and building these constellations, it makes sense for NASA to get this started. No one company could likely afford or even be willing to pay the entire cost, and getting them all to work out an arrangement now would be difficult. NASA in turn can get it done now, and then later negotiate contracts with the private stations to pay for its construction and use.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
It doesn’t really have anything to do with private space stations. Some of them might eventually be users of the system, but not necessarily.
NASA has launched, operated, maintained, and replaced the fleet of TDRSS relay satellites since the 1980s. They are used by many separate missions — NASA’s as well as others’. This award looks to be doing for TDRSS what the ISS Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew programs did for ferrying cargo and astronauts to the ISS: taking a well-defined requirement for services with ongoing demand, and outsourcing it to private industry.
Craig thought: “It doesn’t really have anything to do with private space stations.”
Actually, it almost certainly does have to do with the future private space stations. From the GeekWire article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._tracking_and_data_relay_satellite
Once ISS is decommissioned, NASA will only have the future private space stations as places to do continuous manned spaceflight. With TDRS being replaced by these commercial communication services, NASA will only have these service providers in order to communicate with their astronauts on the private space stations. I cannot imagine that the private space stations would have their own continuous communication systems when these providers would be able to do the job inexpensively.
“A wide range of customers” most likely includes these private space stations.