Exploring the Benefits of CSP For NASA and Industry

In April 2022, NASA announced that it had selected six industry partners to “…begin developing and demonstrating near-Earth space communication services that may support future agency missions.”

These services would ultimately be mission-critical to the agency, which would rely on them to replace NASA’s purpose-built, dedicated Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). NASA and the US Congress have agreed to discontinue further TDRSS satellite builds and just let existing on-orbit assets fly out to their end of life.

But why is NASA relying on this new Communications Services Project (CSP) and industry partners for something so important as near-Earth space relay communication? And, after investing more than $275 million to seed this commercial market space, when will NASA – and other users – be able to leverage commercial relay services?

To get answers to these and other questions about CSP, we sat down with Eric Gunzelman of SES Space & Defense, a commercial satellite provider that was one of the six companies chosen by NASA for the CSP.

During our discussion, we asked Eric about why NASA is looking to the commercial satellite industry for this essential capability, how the agency will benefit from this arrangement, and the progress that SES Space & Defense is making with its partner, Planet Labs, on the LEO Relay System that is being developed in part with CSP funds.

Government Satellite Report (GSR): What is the TDRSS? What does it do, and why does NASA need it?

Eric Gunzelman: Since the first TDRSS launched 41 years ago, its main purpose has been to provide space relay capabilities for NASA. TDRSS has provided space relay capabilities for many notable programs, like Skylab, the Space Shuttle, Landsat, and the International Space Station—as well as the Hubble Space Telescope and even some firsts, like the first pole to pole phone call in April 1989.

Overall, 13 TDRSS satellites were built but TDRS-2 was lost with the 1986 Challenger accident. About six of those satellites remain operational and three are available for operational relay support at any time. By allowing NASA to relay data from lower orbits to satellites in higher orbits, NASA could effectively communicate with science satellites and space station crews and receive data at any time. They could even transmit data and communicate when no ground station was in view.

They’re incredibly important because NASA needs assured communications and connectivity in orbit. Even when the space shuttle or the International Space Station orbits the Earth over an ocean, and they cannot see a ground station, they still need connectivity. TDRSS delivers that assured, mission-critical connectivity.

GSR: Why transition to commercial satellites for this purpose?

Eric Gunzelman: Candidly, the TDRSS constellation is expensive to operate for NASA and government funding could be used for new endeavors, such as the Artemis program, which has NASA going back to the moon. Given technology advances and expanding market opportunities in the commercial sector, space relay could now be provided as a commercial service. This lowers the cost of service for NASA when costs are spread over a larger commercial market.

Commercial alternatives will drastically lower NASA’s initial capital expenditure. NASA will no longer have to pay to build and launch a new generation of TDRSS satellites and service them. They’ll also deliver some other benefits, including increased capabilities, innovation, and capacity.

“Think about what airlines, shipping companies, and farms can do with real-time weather data and imagery from space. It could bring great precision and decision speed to the commercial industry, as well as government agencies, helping to provide greater insights and lower operational costs.” – Eric Gunzelman

Commercial satellite providers have made incredible advancements in their technology and solutions in the 40-plus years since TDRSS was launched. Today, COMSATCOM providers operate incredibly high-throughput satellites across multiple orbits, including LEO and MEO. This makes it possible to transmit large amounts of data in near real-time with very low latency.

Also, large commercial satellite providers expanded their constellations, and new providers came online in that time. There is a massive ecosystem of commercial satellites across multiple orbits that have a tremendous amount of capacity for government missions.

Today, TDRSS’s capacity is limited and requests for service can take weeks to get approved. This means that some requests for service either can’t be filled or will be deprioritized for other, more important missions. That won’t be an issue for commercial satellite providers since there is so much capacity available.

GSR: Where are we in this process? How far off are we from having commercial services replacing TDRSS?

Eric Gunzelman: In the latter half of last decade, NASA developed the supporting analyses and presented the business case to Congress. Legislation evolved and eventually declared that the U.S. government would let the TDRSS program fly out and let NASA work with the commercial industry to develop a space relay commercial market with requisite capabilities that can effectively replace TDRSS functionality.

“The test that we conducted was effectively the first-ever multi-orbit, multi-band commercial space relay link to a LEO flight-representative terminal on the ground. The next step in our partnership with Planet involves an actual flight demonstration.” – Eric Gunzelman

NASA competed the Communications Services Project (CSP) in 2021 and selected six companies for the varied approaches to space relay – different orbits, bands, etc. CSP gave these companies seed money to begin finding ways to turn their solutions into a relay system.

The chosen companies are now in the process of maturing various solutions and conducting testing to ensure it will meet NASA’s needs and requirements by the 2026-2027 timeframe. Once they have various options across multiple bands and orbits, NASA will take those options and present them to NASA and U.S. government users so that they can design their relay requirements against what is available.

GSR: I understand that SES Space & Defense has partnered with Planet Labs for its CSP contract. What role does SES SD play in this? What role does Planet Labs play?

Eric Gunzelman: SES Space & Defense is providing the space and ground segment of our relay solution. Our MEO and GEO satellites, along with our ground segment, will provide multi-band, multi-orbit relay from LEO satellites.

Planet Labs will provide the NASA surrogate satellite, one of their Earth Observation satellites for the relay capability testing. They’re effectively using their LEO spacecraft and earth observation mission to approximate a NASA science mission.

While this sounds simple—relaying data from Planet’s LEO satellite to our MEO and GEO satellites—significant work needs to occur to enable this relay since it was not designed into our satellites originally. Nonetheless, SES prides itself in building open, agnostic architectures so incorporating relay as an additional function is highly doable.

“Given technology advances and expanding market opportunities in the commercial sector, space relay could now be provided as a commercial service. This lowers the cost of service for NASA when costs are spread over a larger commercial market.” – Eric Gunzelman

And for Planet, that work includes the design and development of space-rated LEO communications terminals needed to talk to our MEO and GEO satellites.  They have been an excellent partner for SES Space & Defense, shouldering much of the heavy lifting associated with developing and deploying the space-rated LEO terminals.

GSR: Is this something that only NASA and military users will benefit from? Or could these space relay solutions also benefit commercial users?

Eric Gunzelman: This new capability will be incredibly beneficial for commercial users as well as government users. Planet is a commercial satellite imagery provider, and we purposely teamed with them because they represent an excellent use case in which to demonstrate relay capability to NASA using a similar mission set but also do it from a commercially based platform in operation today.

As such, Planet as a representative of commercial satellite imagery services, shows how NASA could be one of many customers in this new market. And then, for almost any mission, relaying that data through MEO or GEO satellites provides a more responsive option for users verses waiting to overfly the next ground station before getting time-critical science data to the ground for NASA or others to analyze. This means the data can be delivered—including imagery—from space in almost real-time.

That can be huge for many industries. Think about what airlines, shipping companies, and farms can do with real-time weather data and imagery from space. It could bring great precision and decision speed to the commercial industry, as well as government agencies, helping to provide greater insights and lower operational costs.

GSR: Last month, SES Space & Defense and Planet Labs announced that the companies had successfully tested the service. What did this test involve? What’s next?

Eric Gunzelman: The test that we conducted was effectively the first-ever multi-orbit, multi-band commercial space relay link to a LEO flight-representative terminal on the ground. The next step in our partnership with Planet involves an actual flight demonstration. That is scheduled early 2025 and – if successful – sets the stage for the launch of our service offering.

 

Share the Post: