The Air Force could release in February its final request for proposals (RFP) for a program that is slated to accommodate a NASA earth science instrument as a hosted payload on commercial spacecraft, according to a service official.
Air Force Lt. Col. Mark Brykowytch said Oct. 15 the service is also looking at putting out another draft RFP, the second for “TEMPO,” out in November. NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) program will measure the atmospheric pollution covering most of North America, from Mexico City to the Canadian tar/oil sands, and from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans hourly and at high-spatial resolution.
Brykowytch was previously chief of the hosted payload office at Air Force Space Command’s (AFSPC) Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC). He is now, after reorganization, chief of the capabilities, integration and transition division within SMC. Brykowytch’s remarks came at the Hosted Payloads and Small Sat Summit in Washington, which was hosted by Defense Daily parent company Access Intelligence LLC.
The Air Force in the summer awarded Boeing [BA], Orbital Sciences [ORB] and Space Systems/Loral (SSL) three, six-month period of performance contracts worth $800,000 each for TEMPO to determine the feasibility of accommodating the TEMPO instrument as a hosted payload on a spacecraft bound for geostationary earth orbit (GEO).
The TEMPO study contract was awarded under the larger Air Force Hosted Payload Solutions (HoPS) indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract awarded July 10, according to Boeing. HoPS is to provide a rapid and flexible means for the government to acquire commercial hosting capabilities for government payloads. The contract is designed to create a pool of qualified vendors to meet the government’s needs for various hosted payload missions.
The Air Force anticipates an operational TEMPO mission contract award in mid-2015.
The following companies received HoPS contracts: Astrium Services Government, Harris [HRS], SSL, Millennium Engineering and Integration, Surrey Satellite Technology U.S., Orbital Sciences [ORB], Boeing, Exoterra Resources, Lockheed Martin [LMT], Merging Excellence and Innovation Tech, ViviSat, Intelsat General Corp. (IGC), SES Government Solutions and Eutelsat America Corp.