A Falcon Heavy rocket launches the USSF-67 mission on January 15, 2023 from the Kennedy Space Center Kennedy in Florida.
SpaceX
The US military ups the ante – and expands the field – in a high-profile competition for Space Force mission contracts.
The Space Force plans to purchase much more rockets from firms in the coming years than previously expected, giving more firms the probability to secure billions in potential contracts.
“It is a big deal,” Col. Doug Pentecost, deputy program executive director at the United States Space Forces Space Systems Command, told reporters during a briefing this week.
Earlier this 12 months, the Space Force began the strategy of purchasing launch rockets for five years under a lucrative program generally known as National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3. It’s now scaling up.
America sees a growing impetus to enhance its military capabilities in space, resulting in the need to just about triple the variety of Phase 3 launches it purchased in Phase 2 in 2020.
“It just blows me away,” said Pentecost. “We only estimated 36 missions in Phase 2. We estimate 90 missions in Phase 3.”
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In February, Space Force outlined a “mutual fund” technique to buy startups from firms. He split Phase 3 of the NSSL into two groups. Path 1 is a latest approach, with lower requirements and a more flexible bidding process that enables firms to compete when rockets debut in the coming years. Line 2 represents an existing approach where the Space Force plans to pick out a selected variety of firms for missions meeting the most demanding requirements.
Pentecost said the Space Force held an industry day in February to debate program details and 22 firms showed up. Since then, Space Force has made numerous adjustments to Phase 3. It has added more missions, introduced a price cap, expanded Line 2, and established an annual mission task schedule.
The federal government weighs bids in response to the company’s “total estimated price” for launching. That is broken down into “Launch Service”, which is how much it costs to construct and launch a rocket, and “Launch Service Support”, which covers special requirements the military could have to launch. The startup service support amount is capped at $100 million per 12 months per company.
“We have implemented some cost-cutting tools to maintain from growing. We are not looking for [a situation where] everyone gets a mission – you get a mission, you get a mission, you get a mission – because then there is no real competition,” Pentecost said.
“We consider that every one of our industry partners need to be primary, so we consider it will provide competitive prices to maintain our costs down,” added Pentecost.
Lane widening 2
Track 1 is predicted to draw the most bids and award 30 missions, but track 2 is a giant show.
With Lane 2, Space Force secures the most dear contracts to launch national security satellites with the highest rates.
“These are the ones which have $1 billion [satellite] payload goes into unique orbits,” said Pentecost.
Not only has Lane 2 seen a rise in the variety of missions up for grabs – there at the moment are an estimated 58 launches, up from 39 in February – but the Space Force has also made the decision to expand the available slots for possible prizes to 3 firms, fairly than limiting them to 2.
Space Force will award 60% and 40% of the 51 missions respectively to the top two bidders, with the remaining seven launches going to the third-place bidder.
No matter the company’s position, it must show that it may well meet all of the requirements of Runway 2, which include having launch sites on each the east and west coasts, and the ability to hit nine “reference” orbits with high accuracy, several of that are much farther from Earth than the Low Earth Orbit Belt 1 requirement.
Asked by CNBC what number of firms are developing rockets that may meet those requirements by the launch deadline, a Space Force spokesman declined to supply details, saying the military is “tracking just a few” which might be “extending their launch capabilities to most of those orbits.”
“We hope it is not just ULA, SpaceX and Blue Origin competing for this, as there are others who’ve expressed interest in the past,” said Col. Chad Melone, Space Systems Command’s head of procurement and integration, during the briefing.
Supply security
Space Force introduces a one-year deadline of October 1 for assigning missions to firms that won the contract.
Pentecost explained that the first jobs are up for grabs in October 2025, but registered contracts don’t guarantee jobs, which protects the Space Force from delays firms could have in developing and flying rockets.
“You could possibly actually win the contract that you’ve an amazing plan for how you are going to fly [fiscal year] 2027. But since you are not flying yet, and I actually have a satellite that has to fly in two years, we’re not going to present you that mission – we will transfer it to a different guy,” said Pentecost.
Space Force intends to finalize its RFP by September, then submit all proposals by December, before awarding contracts in October 2024.
Space Force officials said the principal driver of this push is to “guarantee capability” as there are “loads of other firms” attempting to buy launches for satellites and Space Force has to lock down their orders.
“We desired to be certain that that we principally hedged against a release shortage that would occur because if there may be a really high demand for a release and everyone seems to be [buying]prices could be very high,” said Melone.
But despite that fear, Pentecost said 2026 “appears to be the best place” when many firms’ rockets will likely be accomplished and able to fly. And the firms that stay on course can have a bonus in Phase 3 of the NSSL.
“In the event you’re flying early or in case your schedule indicates you will be flying early, you’ll need significant strengths that may put you in a greater position to win the top supplier or second best in this competition,” said Pentecost.
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