EUROPEAN S-BAND COMPETITION DRAWS 4 BIDDERS AND 1 LAWSUIT

HUBBLE REPAIR DELAY PUTS ARES 1-X ACTIVITIES ON HOLD

NEW KSC WORK EXPECTED TO LESSEN IMPACT OF POST-SHUTTLE LAYOFFS

EUMETSAT APPROVES DESIGN FOR NEXT-GENERATION WEATHER SATELLITES

OHB USES GALILEO BID TO ESTABLISH CREDENTIALS AS A PRIME

 (Full text of these stories can be found in the printed edition of Space News)

 

EUROPEAN S-BAND COMPETITION DRAWS 4 BIDDERS AND 1 LAWSUIT

By PETER B. de SELDING
Space News Staff Writer

PARIS — Four companies are competing to win European Commission licenses to operate S-band mobile satellite systems in Europe to provide video, audio and data transmissions to hand-held and vehicle-mounted devices starting in 2011.

 

The bidders are demonstrating faith in a business model that has never been proven anywhere in the world at a time when the financial markets' collapse will put debt financing out of the reach of some of them. They are offering television, radio, emergency-response communications and high-speed data links to businesses throughout Europe.

 

In an unusual twist, one of the four bidders, ICO Global Communications of Reston, Va., is suing the commission to stop the licensing process because the commission has refused to acknowledge ICO's lone medium Earth-orbiting satellite, launched in 2001, as a legitimate S-band provider. The satellite was designed as part of a 12-satellite constellation that was never built.

 

ICO's European bid hinges in part on the outcome of a $2.4 billion lawsuit against its former prime contractor, Boeing Satellite Systems International, which is now before a Los Angeles county Superior Court jury. A decision is expected as early as the week of Oct. 13.

 

Only one of the bidding companies, Solaris Mobile, a joint venture of cash-rich satellite-fleet operators SES of Luxembourg and Eutelsat of Paris, has a satellite in full construction in the metal-cutting sense of the word. The other three have satellite systems in the design phase and are waiting for the commission's decision, expected by mid-2009, before making a full commitment.

 

"We cannot make a huge commitment on a satellite without first knowing whether we have been awarded a license, and then how much spectrum we will get," said an official with one of the bidders. "I think we are all hoping that the commission will show flexibility in its

milestone requirements."

 

The commission has about 30 megahertz of S-band spectrum in each direction — ground to space and vice versa — to give away to companies that meet criteria including public service interest, coverage of all 27 European Union nations and construction milestones that all but Solaris may find impossible to respect, industry officials said. The winning bids will receive 18-year licenses from the commission.

 

In addition to Dublin, Ireland-based Solaris and ICO Global, the bidding companies that met the European Commission's Oct. 7 filing deadline are TerreStar Europe Ltd. of London, a subsidiary of TerreStar Corp. of Reston, Va.; and veteran mobile satellite services operator Inmarsat of London.

 

The commission has set milestones that include a completed critical design review of the applicants' satellite by February, and a launch in time to begin operations in June 2011 — just 24 months after a final selection is made.

 

Eutelsat and SES are spending a combined 150 million euros ($206 million) to attach an S-band payload, principally a large, unfurlable antenna, to the Eutelsat W2A satellite, scheduled for launch in early 2009.

 

Steve Maine, chief executive of Solaris Mobile, said the 150 million euros already committed is sufficient to take the company through the third quarter of 2009, including early operating costs of W2A. Maine said Solaris forecasts that more than 1 billion euros in revenue from mobile television service will be generated in Europe in the next five years. Solaris is accenting mobile television, but Maine said the satellite can be tasked to provide radio and high-speed data links as well.

 

Inmarsat, also a profitable service provider but in the L-band portion of the radio spectrum, is entering the S-band competition to broaden its product line to offer dual-mode user devices to capture Inmarsat's traditional L-band signal and the S-band frequency for high-speed data.

 

Inmarsat spokesman Christopher McLaughlin said mobile television and radio, and services to government agencies, are also part of Inmarsat's S-band plans. The company has a preliminary contract with Thales Alenia Space of Cannes, France, to build Inmarsat's Europa S-band satellite.

 

TerreStar, which is building two large satellites for an S-band mobile service in North America, recently has contracted with Space Systems/Loral of Palo Alto, Calif., to build a TerreStar 3 satellite for Europe, TerreStar Executive Vice President Ben Gore said.

 

Gore said an earlier TerreStar agreement with Astrium Satellites of Europe was shelved in favor of Loral out of concern that the Astrium satellite would be too sophisticated to be launched by the commission's mid-2011 deadline.

 

"It's a challenging schedule," Gore said. He said Loral will be able to use a design similar to the first TerreStar spacecraft to help keep to the deadline. The first TerreStar satellite is scheduled for launch in mid-2009.

 

Gore said TerreStar's European S-band business will be similar to its North American operation and focus on delivering high-speed data to government agencies.

 

ICO Global had promised its shareholders that it would challenge any European Commission S-band licensing process that did not recognize ICO as an existing service provider.

 

ICO announced Oct. 8 that it would be entering the European Commission's selection process but, in parallel, had initiated proceedings with the European Court of First Instance to annul the procedure.

 

ICO spokesman Christopher Doherty said ICO wants to force the commission to "recognize ICO's legacy rights to S-band spectrum." ICO won British regulatory approval for the 12-satellite system and was registered with the Geneva-based International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as an operating system in 2004.

 

But because the company has failed to launch the rest of the constellation, its British regulatory backing has been eroding. Britain's Ofcom regulatory authority has said it may take action to cancel ICO's ITU registration. Doherty said Ofcom has agreed to await the results of the Boeing lawsuit before taking action.

 

ICO is developing a separate business in North America using the ICO G1 satellite that was launched into geostationary orbit earlier this year and is operating under U.S. Federal Communications Commission regulatory authority.

 

ICO's satellite in medium Earth orbit was never intended to provide the necessary coverage to win European regulatory backing. ICO officials instead say they intend to launch the full 12-satellite constellation they originally designed.

 

ICO has 10 partially built satellites in storage and is battling with manufacturer Boeing Satellite Systems International of El Segundo, Calif., over who bears responsibility for the collapse of ICO's constellation contract with Boeing.

 

The Los Angeles county Superior Court jury has been deliberating on the evidence since mid-September and is not expected to return a verdict until Oct. 14 at the earliest. 

 

[Back to the Top]

 

HUBBLE REPAIR DELAY PUTS ARES 1-X ACTIVITIES ON HOLD

By BRIAN BERGER
Space News Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — NASA's postponement of the Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission until at least February is all but certain to delay the first test flight of the U.S. space agency's new astronaut-launching rocket.

 

NASA has been targeting a late-spring launch out of Florida's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) of Ares 1-X, an early prototype of the Ares 1 crew launch vehicle the agency intends to field in 2015. The Ares 1, derived from the space shuttle solid-rocket motors, will be used to loft NASA's planned Crew Exploration Vehicle into space.

 

But before NASA can move ahead with the Ares 1-X flight, the agency first needs to make some permanent modifications to a space shuttle launch pad that must remain unchanged until after the Hubble repair mission.

 

Carol Scott, NASA's Ares 1-X deputy mission manager at KSC, said the basic plan for getting Launch Complex Pad 39B ready for Ares 1-X remains unchanged, but acknowledged in an Oct. 3 interview that a schedule slip appears certain.

 

"We are all going through schedule assessments especially now with the Hubble delay," Scott said. "I do expect to have a new schedule coming out of that and then I believe schedules will be adjusted at that point."

 

Although senior NASA officials told reporters prior to the Hubble setback that the Ares 1-X flight likely would not launch before summer, the Ares 1 program and its contractors have continued to target an April 15 launch date.

 

Scott said a mid-April launch is no longer possible.

 

"Not with the Hubble delays we have. We would not be able to meet an April 15 date," she said.

 

Space Shuttle Atlantis was positioned on Launch Complex Pad 39A with a full load of spare parts awaiting its scheduled Oct. 14 launch toward Hubble when the 18-year-old space telescope experienced an onboard computer failure Sept. 27. The glitch was serious enough that NASA wasted little time announcing that the mission would have to be put off for several months.

 

NASA made the call while a second space shuttle orbiter, Endeavour, was perched atop neighboring Pad 39B being readied for a so-called launch-on-need rescue mission agency officials hope will not be necessary. NASA rules require that for shuttle missions to destinations other than the international space station, a second orbiter must be ready to launch on a rescue mission should something go wrong with the first.

 

Had the Hubble repair mission lifted off in mid-October as planned, ground crews would have gotten to work almost immediately washing down Atlantis' Mobile Launch Platform and preparing the giant tracked vehicle for a number of modifications needed to support the Ares 1-X flight. Meanwhile, once it was clear that Endeavour would not be needed to rescue a stranded Hubble-repair crew, that orbiter would be moved to Pad 39A for a mid-November launch to the space station. The Mobile Launch Platform used for Atlantis' liftoff then would be rolled out to Pad 39B where it would undergo a planned 10 weeks worth of modifications.

 

Ground crews also would begin installation of a command, communications and control system and swap out some interfaces between the pad and launch platform, all while continuing to erect a new lightning tower tall enough to protect the roughly 95-meter-tall rocket during the thunderstorms prevalent along the Florida coast during warmer months.

 

Scott said work on the lightning tower would not be affected by the Hubble delay. She also said a number of key changes planned for the pad were not due to get under way until January or February.

 

"We're still in design phase so a lot of the [equipment] like the vehicle stabilization system ... aren't slated to come here until April and that will not be affected by Hubble," she said.

 

Scott said it was too early to determine how much Ares 1-X would be delayed as a result of Hubble's problems. The Ares program, she said, cannot replan the Ares 1-X work until the space shuttle program nails down a new schedule for the Hubble repair mission.

 

However, Scott said she is hopeful that Hubble's delay will not result in a month-for-month slip for Ares 1-X.

 

"Because that's what KSC does best — they will go and reprioritize and reprogram to see how they can still meet the earliest date. That's what we do here all the time," she said.

 

Meanwhile, Ares 1-X flight hardware is starting to ship from various points around the United States. NASA's Cleveland-based Glenn Research Center, for example, has finished construction of an Ares 1-X dummy upper stage and plans to ship that hardware out before the end of October.

 

Glenn spokeswoman Katherine Martin said a media event is planned for Oct. 22 at the Ohio River port where the dummy rocket stage will begin its journey down to KSC aboard the Delta Mariner, the same vessel that carries Delta 4 rocket stages too big to travel over land.

 

Scott said having the bulk of the rocket and new ground support hardware on hand before pad modifications begin in earnest actually could permit KSC to work more efficiently than otherwise might have been possible. This could keep a five-month delay in handover of Pad 39B from translating into a five-month delay in the launch of Ares 1-X.

 

"Hardware deliveries will be at more opportune times within the schedule so we can do more parallel work now than we could have," she said. "They probably will be doing more work in parallel so they may be able to shorten the delay so it may not be the same five-month delay." 

 

[Back to the Top]

NEW KSC WORK EXPECTED TO LESSEN IMPACT OF POST-SHUTTLE LAYOFFS

By BRIAN BERGER
Space News Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — NASA is forecasting Kennedy Space Center (KSC) will lose fewer jobs when the space shuttle retires than the worst-case scenario figures the U.S. space agency published in March.

 

NASA told Congress earlier this year that a survey of space shuttle contractors showed that as many as 6,400 workers could be given pink slips when the shuttle retires from service in 2010. But NASA officials stressed that 6,400 was a worst-case scenario that failed to take into consideration the hundreds or thousands of new jobs that would be created at Kennedy as NASA gets rolling on the new spacecraft and rockets it needs to return to the Moon.

 

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said earlier this year that shuttle-related job losses likely would be closer to 3,000 to 4,000 once Constellation Program work was taken more fully into consideration The second edition of a congressionally mandated shuttle work force transition report NASA released Oct. 8 shows that Kennedy Space Center will shed approximately 4,500 full-time positions (NASA calls them work year equivalents) between 2008 and 2011, the first year NASA expects to not be flying the shuttle. By 2013, however, about 1,000 full-time positions could be added at KSC as the Florida launch center's share of Constellation work ramps up.

 

Joel Kearns, the NASA Space Operations Mission Directorate's work force transition manager, in an Oct. 9 interview, attributed the rosier forecast for Kennedy-area contractors to progress NASA has made since March in quantifying some of the Constellation-related work to be performed there.

 

He said the projections could continue to change as NASA updates its estimates to take into account downstream Constellation projects for which contracts have yet to be awarded.

 

"There's not a lot of work related to Ares 5 and Altair lunar lander that's included in this report because we don't even have the government estimates we can make public to put in a report like this because they are all procurement sensitive," Kearns said. "We have internal government estimates for what we are going to buy but we can't put that in a public report because that would violate federal acquisition regulations."

 

Kearns pointed to the Oct. 6 release of a request for information from contractors regarding the Altair work as an example of some of the steps NASA is taking to firm up its plans for buying hardware beyond the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and Ares 1 rocket already under contract.

 

He also said Kennedy's employment forecast would become clearer as NASA gets closer to awarding a new ground support services contract. A request for proposals is due out next spring or summer with a contract award expected sometime in 2010. While NASA has some idea of how many people it will need to support future launch operations, it cannot telegraph this information to contractors gearing up to submit bids.

 

"That's one of the difficulties we have in doing the work force transition report," Kearns said. "We want to show the work force there are opportunities out there but ... in some ways we are hamstrung when we do this report until we march further into the future and get more of these contracts awarded."

 

Kennedy Space Center stands to be the hardest hit of all NASA centers when it comes to shuttle-related job losses. NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans also stands to lose a large number of jobs when production of space shuttle external tanks comes to an end. Michoud's contractor payrolls are forecast to decline by about 40 percent during the next couple years, from 1,900 positions in 2008 down to 1,100 positions by 2010.

 

NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston could also lose jobs as the shuttle stops flying and construction of the international space station comes to an end. Depending on how much Constellation work ultimately is performed there, Johnson-area contractors could find themselves with 400 to 2,200 fewer NASA positions to staff in 2011 compared to 2008.

 

Marshall Space Flight Center — the Huntsville, Ala.-based center responsible for Ares 1 — appears to be on a growth path with between 400 and 2,800 full-time positions expected to be added by 2013.

 

NASA's other field centers are largely unaffected by the shuttle work force transition.

 

NASA is required by a 2007 law to update the transition report twice a year.   

 

[Back to the Top]

EUMETSAT APPROVES DESIGN FOR NEXT-GENERATION WEATHER SATELLITES

By BRIAN BERGER
Space News Staff Writer

PARIS — Europe's weather-satellite organization approved the design of a Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) system to be launched starting in 2015 and to include two identical satellite platforms carrying separate suites of instruments.

 

Tentatively budgeted at 2.5 billion euros ($3.75 billion), MTG will include construction of six satellites four imaging spacecraft to be launched in sets of two, with one serving as backup to the other; and two satellites equipped with infrared and near-infrared sounding instruments that would be launched some eight years apart.

 

Meeting Oct. 9-10 in Darmstadt, Germany, the council of the 22-nation Eumetsat placed the MTG process squarely in the path of the European Space Agency (ESA), whose governments are scheduled to vote on their share of MTG at a Nov. 25-26 meeting of ESA governments.

 

As was the case with the first two Meteosat generations, MTG's first spacecraft will be designed by ESA, which will finance 70 percent of the construction and launch of the first imager and first sounder satellites. Eumetsat governments said they would finance the remaining 30 percent of the first spacecraft.

 

Eumetsat is leaving it up to ESA to determine the precise cost of the MTG prototype spacecraft, but ESA has estimated that the total cost could approach 1 billion euros, with ESA paying 700 million euros of that.

 

If these figures hold once the satellite construction and ground-segment contracts are signed, that would put the MTG bill to Eumetsat at about 1.8 billion euros, which is close to what the agency is paying for the Meteosat Second Generation system now in orbit.

 

Four second-generation Meteosats are being built, each with a seven-year operational life in geostationary orbit. The fourth will be launched late enough to continue in operation until 2015 to serve as a backup for the first MTG imaging satellite.

 

The MTG spacecraft will be designed to last eight years, and will represent a break from the earlier Meteosat design, which has featured spin-stabilized platforms that rotate slowly in orbit to maintain their position.

 

The MTG satellites will be three-axis stabilized, and will be small enough to be launched by the European version of Russia's Soyuz rocket, to be operated from Europe's Guiana Space Center spaceport starting in 2010.

 

The operational MTG system will feature two satellites with complementary payloads, another difference from earlier Meteosat generations that partly reflects Eumetsat's expanding role in environmental monitoring in addition to classic weather forecasting.

 

The MTG sounder satellites will include an ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared sounder that will be part of ESA's Sentinel program of spaceborne sensors to be launched as part of a broad Earth observation program called Kopernikus.

 

It remains unclear whether ESA will structure the MTG contracting-bid competition to favor the selection of a single company to build all six satellites, and thereby reduce per-satellite costs.

 

The first imaging MTG satellite would be launched in late 2015, assuming ESA and Eumetsat move quickly enough to permit a contract to be signed in 2011. This contract date assumes that ESA, at its meeting in November, approves a so-called Phase B MTG program that would hone the design and lead to a contract proposal. The second imaging satellite would be launched in 2020, the third in 2024 and the fourth and final model in 2028, providing uninterrupted MTG service for a 20-year period.

 

Each satellite would be designed to last eight years in geostationary orbit and could carry a principle imaging instrument, a lightning imager, a data collection system and a sear-and-rescue payload to continue today's Cospas-Sarsat service.

 

The first MTG sounding satellite would be launched in 2018, with the second launched in 2026.

 

Eumetsat announced Oct. 10 that the council instructed Eumetsat Director-General Lars Prahm and ESA to search for ways to "further present cost-saving options" for MTG.

 

[Back to the Top]

OHB USES GALILEO BID TO ESTABLISH CREDENTIALS AS A PRIME

By PETER B. de SELDING
Space News Staff Writer

GLASGOW, Scotland — OHB Technology is bidding against a much larger consortium to build 28 Galileo navigation satellites as a signal to European governments that the company should be viewed as a prime contractor, OHB Chief Executive Marco Fuchs said.

 

But while the Bremen, Germany-based company intends to pursue the Galileo competition to the end, it is concerned that its bid may be used simply to prevent the competing consortium, led by Astrium Satellites, from bidding an overly high price.

 

"Obviously we are the outsider, that's clear," Fuchs said here Oct. 1 at the International Astronautical Congress. "The biggest concern we have is: Are we really just a rabbit to help get a lower price from Astrium?"

 

OHB has teamed with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. of Britain in its bid to build 28 Galileo satellites.

 

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Commission are financing Galileo and have set a budget of 3.4 billion euros ($4.7 billion) as total system costs from 2007 through 2013, when the full constellation is expected to be in orbit.

 

Government and industry officials say some of the Galileo satellite launches likely will slip into 2014, if only because that is when the European Commission will have fresh financing available in the event the system cannot meet the budget target.

 

Astrium, teamed with Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy, is building the four in-orbit validation Galileo satellites to be launched in 2010. The consortium was established after long negotiations with European governments on the roles of different component builders, a way of assuring that ESA government contributors could be guaranteed a return on their investment through work for their domestic industries. 

 

ESA and the European Commission have said they want competitive bids wherever possible on Galileo, but they also say a case can be made for selecting only one contractor for the entire constellation.

 

"If ESA has to oversee two industrial teams building satellites, it adds costs," said one government official involved in Galileo. "Having two teams also means you reduce your chance of getting economies of scale that you would expect if you gave one team all 28 satellites."

 

Fuchs agreed that, to defend its chances, OHB will have to persuade ESA that whatever additional costs there are in selecting two contractors, there also will be long-term savings.

 

"In the short term, having two teams costs more but dual sourcing is much more attractive to the taxpayers in the long term," Fuchs said. "Also, having a redundancy built into the system with two prime contractors has an advantage, as we have seen with the two experimental satellites."

 

Surrey Satellite Technology and the Astrium-led consortium each built one experimental Galileo satellite. Surrey's was finished first and permitted Europe to preserve Galileo signal frequencies with international regulators. Both satellites now are operating in medium Earth orbit.

 

OHB and Astrium are scheduled to present preliminary bids by Nov. 7, with ESA then managing an increasingly detailed series of negotiations with both teams — ESA uses the term "competitive dialogue" to describe the process — until selecting the winner in mid-2009.

 

How far apart the OHB and Astrium proposals will be in price is unclear. Because of the limited supplier base in Europe, the two teams will be soliciting bids from many of the same component manufacturers, which presumably will submit the same prices to both the prime contractor teams.

 

OHB has been growing its space business by making acquisitions in recent years and, with Galileo, finds itself in a situation similar to where it was in 2001 with a German Defense Ministry contract to build five identical SAR-Lupe radar reconnaissance satellites.

 

OHB was a clear underdog in the competition, facing off against a well-proven Astrium team. But the company won the contract and since has overseen the successful construction and launch of the SAR-Lupe constellation. More recently, OHB has secured German government backing to promote an ESA program, called Small-GEO, to design a small commercial telecommunications satellite platform, bringing OHB squarely into the commercial satellite market. Satellite-fleet operator Hispasat is the first customer for the Small-GEO platform.

 

For Galileo, Fuchs said the company will be spending perhaps 2 million euros on preparing the bid documentation and negotiating with ESA and with component suppliers.

 

"We will stay in the race until the end," Fuchs said. "The risk for us is not that high: If we don't get any of the work, we have still made an investment that will serve us in the future. The goal here is to position ourselves in Europe to be viewed by ESA as a prime contractor. This is strategic for us."  

 

[Back to the Top]