As the technology for satellites, as well as their payloads and ground stations, evolve ever more rapidly, Lockheed Martin [LMT] is preparing for a future environment where satellites could be reprogrammed for a new mission while still in orbit, and where government payloads could hitch a ride on commercial satellites with much more regularity.
Mike Hamel, Lockheed Martin’s president of commercial space, said at a company media day that the hosted payload concept is the exception but not the rule today, but he noted that industry seems willing to take a chance on that business model if the government were willing to make the switch.
“There’s a little bit of wish on the part of both commercial operators and commercial manufacturers that we’d get to a point where we’re doing more of this on a more routine basis,” he said. “It does seem like an idea that on the surface should be very worthy,” but there have been some implementation challenges.
Government payloads can take years to develop, whereas commercial satellite manufacturers can go from contract award to launch in 24 to 30 months, he said. The government would need to have its payload flight-ready as the satellite is being manufactured for this system to work, whereas right now the government is often trying to catch up with satellite manufacturing.
Hamel also noted that different satellites have different specifications to interface with a payload, and some are more flexible than others. If the government viewed satellites as a ride into space for its payloads, rather than as something to procure, then commercial operators would want to buy satellites that are more interoperable, and commercial manufacturers then would have to improve their products and make them as payload-friendly as possible.
“That whole commercial marketplace, it just drives a different scale of time and innovation, if you will, that we think is really important for the long-term health of the industry,” Hamel said.
He said he hoped this model of operations would catch on in the next two to three years, adding that “industry is willing to lean forward if we just simply knew there was a stream of payloads and a need on the part of government to actually go fly them in space.”
As for the payloads and satellites themselves, Hamel said he could envision a scenario in which a communications satellite would need to change frequencies, or the government would need to change how it encrypts its imagery payload, to keep up with an ever-changing world during a satellites’ 15-year lifespan.
“One of the areas we’re making a very large investment in, and actually leveraging some of our defense and other government-sponsored research, is to going to a much more generalized software-definable satellite,” Hamel said. “With the advent of very high-speed, high-capacity digital processing, it is now coming to the point where we could make that reprogrammable on orbit. Since you literally can change the configuration of the satellite and what kind of signals you can put through, how they can be rerouted, what kind of cryptographic enablement you would have, you really can create a very flexible, high-throughput satellite that can be reconfigured depending upon how the ground technology changes.”
Hamel said Lockheed Martin was making the investment now because the company believes that if the satellite operators don’t have to pay for the research and development, the company would gain a tremendous business advantage over its competition.
“Where there is a good competitive business case, there’s always capital to be found,” he said. “So we really think this could become an engine of innovation the government then can exploit and take advantage of also.”