What, exactly, has been happening? Let’s take a look at some of the headlines:

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Launch Brings Humanity One Giant Leap Closer To Mars
If going to the Moon is redundant and boring to people, maybe we have to set our sights out a bit further. What if we went to Mars? That’s exactly what this week’s incredibly historic and significant launch of Space X’s Falcon Heavy Rocket could enable in time.

This article by Forbes does an excellent job of laying out the challenges that Mars and other deep space exploration creates for the scientific community. It also lays out just why the Falcon Heavy launch was so significant.

To sum up, getting people onto Mars would take preparation and sending a lot of equipment and supplies in advance. Previous rockets and space shuttles have been powerful and capable of carrying large payloads, but they’ve been extremely expensive and can only be used once. Falcon Heavy changed all of that. It’s a fraction of the cost of previous rockets, and its boosters can be recovered and reused.

Is this week’s test launch – which achieved low-Earth orbit – immediately going to enable us to send men to Mars? No. But it’s an important first step in overcoming the cost challenges that Mars missions have always faced, and an exciting development for the future of space flight and exploration. It also flung a pretty rocking car into space…so that’s pretty awesome.

NASA’s GOLD Mission Powers on for First Time After Eventful Launch
Not to be outdone by an upstart commercial space flight company, the original founder of the space industry – NASA – did something pretty incredible in the past few weeks as well. NASA launched a hosted payload designed to help gauge weather and temperatures in an important region of the atmosphere influenced by weather events on Earth and in space.

What was truly exciting and revolutionary about this payload was that it wasn’t aboard a NASA satellite. Instead, the payload was carried to space onboard SES-14, a commercial satellite owned and operated by COMSATCOM provider (and Government Satellite Report sponsor) SES.

By launching GOLD as a hosted payload onboard a commercial space craft, NASA was able to execute its mission at a fraction of the cost by effectively hitching a ride to space. That strategy was validated when the GOLD payload was turned on – albeit temporarily – following launch and everything appeared to be functioning.

Click the link above to the Space.com article to learn more about GOLD and its timeline to start science operations. Additional information about GOLD is available HERE.

Falcon 9 soars into space with GovSat 1
And not to be outdone by NASA, Space X made news again this past week when it reused a rocket to launch another exciting and revolutionary satellite – GovSat-1.

Designed exclusively for the government and defense community, GovSat-1 is the first satellite of GovSat, which is a joint venture between the Government of Luxembourg and SES.

GovSat-1 was designed for dual use to support both defense and civil security applications, including mobile and fixed communications. It is a multi-mission satellite that offers X-band and Military Ka-band capacity. The spacecraft will provide up to six high-powered and fully steerable spot beams, as well as an advanced Global X-band beam.

GovSat-1 is the first commercial satellite designed to only carry government and defense communications. The fact that it made its way into space onboard a flight-proven rocket just adds to its status as a history-making satellite.

For additional information about GovSat-1, download a brochure by clicking HERE.

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GOLD (short for Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk) is a hosted payload that will be launched into orbit on board the SES-14 satellite. That launch is expected to take place later this month.

According to NASA, once launched and active, GOLD will, “…inspect the dynamic region of near-Earth space where space and Earth’s uppermost atmosphere meet.” This is an important mission since that little-understood region is, “…historically difficult to observe [and] responds both to the lower atmosphere below and the tumult of space weather from above.”

The show, airing live on the NASA Sun Science Facebook Page as well as NASA TV online will feature NASA scientists, Sarah Jones and Alex Young. They’ll be joined by frequent Government Satellite Report contributor and podcast participant, Todd Gossett, the Director of Hosted Payloads at SES Space and Defense.

During the show, the panel of experts will discuss GOLD’s mission, analyze why it’s important for the scientific community and the agency, and share details on the upcoming launch. They’ll also answer viewer questions about the program that are left in the comments. Use the hashtag #AskNASA on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram to send in your questions!

Be sure to tune in today at 1 p.m. ET to learn about this groundbreaking science mission.

To access the show on the NASA Sun Science Facebook Page, click HERE. For additional information about GOLD and hosted payloads, click on the following resources:

• White Paper: What is a Hosted Payload
• NASA Strikes GOLD with Hosted Payloads
• What Exactly Do You Need for a Hosted Payload Program at a University?
• Understanding the Realities of Implementing a Hosted Payload Program at a University

The post “Going for GOLD: Exploring the Interface to Space” on NASA TV – Today at 1 p.m. ET appeared first on SES Space and Defense.

Benefits of Academic Institutions Pursuing Hosted Payloads
The involvement of academic institutions in a hosted payload program may be unique, but it shouldn’t be particularly surprising. That’s because hosted payloads can deliver multiple significant benefits to any academic institution looking to gather satellite data for use in research and scientific pursuits – especially in such hot research areas as climate science.

Hosted payloads present many of the same advantages for academic institutions that other government agencies using hosted payloads, like the FAA, already experience. The most important of these being the conservation of time, resources and funds. The cost of building a spacecraft and launching it is extremely high. Which is what makes the concept of hosted payloads so appealing for government agencies and academic institutions, alike.

As Todd Gossett, Senior Director of Hosted Payloads at SES Space and Defense explained, “It’s a cheaper way to get into space. And that’s because they [universities] don’t have to procure an entire spacecraft [and]the entire support infrastructure that comes with that, such as the ground commanding infrastructure, antennas, operations center, etc. And they don’t have to procure a launch…really it’s because the unique attributes of a hosted payload program really match up with the funding and the infrastructure of the hosted payload customer.”

Understand the Challenges of Starting a Hosted Payload Program in Academia
That’s not to say there wouldn’t be some sizable challenges to overcome in order to put a hosted payload program in place at an academic institution. Even with the massive cost savings that hosted payloads offer, these projects can still cost millions.

This is the main deterrent that is pushing most academic satellite programs to focus on much smaller satellites like nanosats or cubesats. However, although these satellites offer a valuable learning experience, they simply can’t stay in orbit as long as a hosted payload on a GEO satellite, and they seem to be limited to LEO.

Find a Government Partner with Similar Goals
Of course, government budgets for scientific exploration are far larger than that of an academic institution. So in order to put a hosted payload program into action, the university will likely need to seek out a government sponsor with similar scientific goals.  “Seek out a government sponsor who is interested in the science that they could produce as a result of putting a mission into space,” Gossett explained. “That’s going to make it much easier for [universities] to obtain the requisite funding to put a science mission on board a spacecraft.”

Build Hardware that is Space Certified
Beyond funding, there is also the challenge of building payload hardware that is space certified. This is where partnerships with third-party vendors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Leidos, Ball Aerospace and some universities like University of Colorado, University of Massachusetts Lowell and University of California Berkeley come into play; they’re capable of building space-qualified hardware that both meet mission requirements and can withstand the harsh environment of space. Satellite vendors such as Boeing, Airbus Defense and Space, and Orbital ATK also provide experienced teams to integrate hosted payloads with the host satellite.

Finally, owner-operators such as SES Space and Defense can operate the host satellite, facilitate operations of the hosted payload, and downlink and disseminate mission data using the company’s existing satellite command and control and ground infrastructures, all invaluable resources to a typically lean academic team.

For universities and other academic institutions to successfully take part in a hosted payloads program, they likely will need to find a government partner with similar scientific goals in mind to sponsor the project, and a third-party vendor to support the hardware and infrastructure needs of that project. Like most academic pursuits, a hosted payload program is a collaborative effort.  However, should an academic institution put in the work and build a team – similar to the one behind the NASA GOLD program – the benefits could be well worth their effort.

To learn more about hosted payloads and their benefits, check out SES Space and Defense’s whitepaper entitled, “What is a Hosted Payload” or watch the Hosted Payloads Video here.

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The WAAS is notable for multiple reasons. The first is its important role in aviation and public safety. Another is the fact that it’s comprised of hosted payloads –WAAS equipment—antennas, receivers, and transmitters—h osted aboard commercial satellites, that are used to broadcast the WAAS signal to users throughout North America.

While the federal government has been slow adopt hosted payloads for widespread usage for plethora government space missions,, the FAA has been a believer and user of hosted payloads for decades – and there’s a very good reason for that. Hosted payloads are a faster, less expensive and easier way to get payloads into space.

Use of a commercially hosted payload means a government organization won’t have to pay the full development and construction cost of the satellite. Further, a hosted payload user  won’t bear the full burden of launch costs. Finally, with approximately 20 commercial launches to geostationary orbit per year and a relatively short timeline to get a payload on orbit – approximately three years from contract to launch—use of commercially hosted payloads can enable a government program to get on orbit faster than use of traditional “free flyer” programs.

These benefits were well illustrated by Al Tadros, the Chair of the Hosted Payload Alliance and VP of Civil and DoD Business for Space Systems Loral (SSL), during the 2016 Hosted Payload and Small Sat Summit, when he listed the benefits of hosted payloads, which included, “Increased access to space, lower launch cost and risk, more resilient architectures resulting from hosting on commercial satellites, operational flexibility of having access on a large number of commercial satellites and payload-focused acquisitions rather than the full-on, purpose built, free-flyer missions that the government regularly uses.”

With the benefits so well established, it’s really no surprise that other federal agencies – besides the FAA – are starting to get the memo about hosted payloads. New hosted payload programs have been executed or announced across both the defense and civilian sectors of the federal government – including the Air Force’s CHIRP Program, and NASA’s GOLD and GeoCarb Programs.

Some of these successful hosted payload programs were the subject of a recent video released by SES Space and Defense. Here is a closer look at some of the programs that SES Space and Defense has run on behalf of the federal government:

To learn more about hosted payloads and how they can give government agencies and the Department of Defense more efficient and expedient access to space, click the following resources:  

• Whitepaper: What is a Hosted Payload?
• Hosted Payloads Infographic
• PODCAST: Nicole Robinson on the benefits of hosted payloads for NOAA and other federal agencies
• PODCAST: CHIRP team discusses program and benefits of hosted payloads

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