[Via Satellite 10-16-2014] The United States Air Force <\/b>is keen to use the $495 million Hosted Payloads Solutions (HoPS) Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to begin consistently including hosted payloads in future architectures. Speaking on a panel at the Hosted Payload and SmallSat Summit yesterday, Lt. Col. Mark Brykowytch of Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) said all of SMC\u2019s future mission architectures include hosted payloads and that he \u201ccan\u2019t allow them not to.\u201d<\/p>\n
In July 2014 SMC awarded 14 companies with contracts to cultivate on-orbit and ground systems services for government-furnished hosted payloads on commercial satellites. The first fully funded mission on the IDIQ is not an Air Force payload, but NASA<\/b>\u2019s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) mission. Col. Alan Rebholz, chief of the Air Force\u2019s space operations division, described NASA\u2019s frontrunner position as intriguing, noting that the agency will be hosting a technically and programmatically challenging mission. Rebholz also praised the success of the Commercially Hosted Infrared Payload (CHIRP) flight demonstration with SES Government Solutions<\/b>, which launched in 2011.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot begin to describe the amount of goodness that came out of that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But CHIRP came with its own challenges. The payload proved extremely helpful in tracking the Russian Phobos-Grunt Mars mission that failed to leave Earth\u2019s gravity correctly, helping track where it would land; but the Air Force had to create its own software for infrared data because available solutions were proprietary. The Air Force hopes to avoid similar situations in the future by making hosted payloads commonplace in the government\u2019s long-term strategy.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of those things we learned is you can\u2019t have a one-off event. Ultimately what we identified at a program level is we\u2019ve got to create a streamlined approach,\u201d said Brykowytch, who is now chief of the capabilities, integration and transition division within SMC, having previously served as chief of the SMC\u2019s hosted payload office. \u201cThe number one lesson learned was we have got to make this a repeatable process, and I think that the IDIQ will be able to do that. CHIRP was a huge success, but it required herculean efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Industry representatives expressed concern that the correct way to implement hosted payloads has not been well understood, resulting in their limited use. Without this understanding, there is a fear that progress with hosted payloads could stagnate again.<\/p>\n
\u201cHosted payloads are still an event,\u201d said Janet Nickloy, chair of the Hosted Payload Alliance<\/b> and VP of strategy and business development for national programs at Harris Corporation<\/b>. \u201cThey are not commonplace, [and] they are not integrated into the way that the United States does business. We need them to be just part of the cycle. This is as viable an approach as building a large expensive satellite.\u201d<\/p>\n
One well-received method was imitating an agreement Boeing<\/b> reached with the U.S. government to guide the development of two hyperspectral small satellites for HySpecIQ<\/b>. Boeing\u2019s President of Commercial Satellite Services and VP of Commercial Satellite Systems for Space and Intelligence Systems (S&IS) Jim Simpson said part of the reason the company\u2019s first Boeing 502 Phoenix satellite sales came to fruition was because the company reached cooperative agreements with the U.S. government to help test and look at the requirements of the system. The government has no requirement to purchase any services from the two satellites once launched in 2018, but the commitment to steer their development gave the confidence boost needed to fund the program, he said.<\/p>\n
For hosted payloads, similar collaborative development methods could help make sure more are funded and built. Simpson said it takes six to 10 months to get these cooperative agreements in writing, but once the ink dries commercial industry has that much more reason to invest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Via Satellite 10-16-2014] The United States Air Force is keen to use the $495 million Hosted Payloads Solutions (HoPS) Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to begin consistently including hosted payloads in future architectures. Speaking on a panel at the Hosted Payload and SmallSat Summit yesterday, Lt. Col. Mark Brykowytch of Air Force Space and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75946"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}