With U.S. military officials
frustrated at the expense and time needed to build satellites, the Pentagon is
fielding small satellites called TacSats that can be built faster and cheaper
based on already mature technology.
At the same
time, the Pentagon is working to identify technology that is not ready today,
but can be matured relatively quickly for use with TacSats at some point in the
future.
During a
briefing for aerospace industry officials July 11, Navy Capt. Jeff Graham,
deputy program officer for sensing and systems at the Office of Naval Research,
summed up the frustrations of Navy space users--and their resulting interest
in TacSats--with a slide that stated simply: "In general, 'space costs too
much and takes too long.'"
Defense officials want troops on the
ground to be able to use TacSats as soon as they need them to conduct surveillance of enemy troops, to
watch for missile launches, track friendly forces, provide accurate
targeting and forecast weather conditions, Christopher Olmedo,
the Army's liaison to the Air Force Research Laboratory, said during the July
11 briefing, which was conducted at the Naval Research Laboratory's (NRL)
Washington headquarters.
The TacSats
are intended to be tasked directly by deployed military commanders. The first
spacecraft in the series is expected to launch aboard Space Exploration
Technologies' Falcon 1 rocket in late 2006, according to the company's Web site.
Separately,
Congress added $17 million to the 2006 defense budget to begin a payload technology
incubator effort. That money does not expire until 2007, according to Mike
Hurley, head of spacecraft development and operationally responsive space
at the NRL. NRL and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln
Laboratory of Lexington, Mass., execute the program on behalf of the Pentagon's
Office of Force Transformation, which had started the TacSat work in 2003.
NRL is
leading work on both TacSat-1 and TacSat-4.
The
technology incubator effort includes representatives from the Army, Navy and
Air Force, Hurley said. The effort also coordinates with the various military
combatant commanders to ensure that their needs are addressed, according to a
broad agency announcement issued by NRL seeking industry proposals for work
under the technology incubator.
Responses
to the broad agency announcement are due Aug. 14. The effort has three levels
of contracts, each with a different timeframe for awards.
Basic work
that includes writing technical reports or testing a piece of hardware to see
how it might react to radiation in space could be covered under awards worth up
to $500,000, Hurley said. Those awards are expected to be made by the end of
October.
Awards of
up to $2.5 million that are part of a category called "moderate" could entail
developing relatively advanced payload designs, Hurley said. Those awards are
expected around December.
The third
category, dubbed "complex," includes awards of up to $5 million that could cover
work like the development of advanced prototypes, Hurley said. While that work
would not likely generate flight ready hardware, it could take the technology
to the point in maturity where it would be ready to be incorporated on a future
TacSat, he said.
The
incubator effort is intended to focus on technology that is not likely to be
addressed elsewhere in the space community. One possible example of this is
trying to apply payload technology used with unmanned aerial vehicles towards TacSats,
as NRL did with TacSat-1, Hurley said.
While
technology used on unmanned aircraft might typically be excluded from a space
effort because it cannot survive over the long term in the space radiation
environment, it might be useful with TacSats, which are not
expected to operate for more than a few years, Hurley said.
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