Satellite News

Harris Corporation has announced that it has won a NASA contract as part of the agency’s Crew, Robotics, Avionics, and Vehicle Equipment program. Harris Corporation has been chosen to be a member of the Oceaneering Space Systems, Inc. team. The Oceaneering team is one of three industry teams and two universities selected to participate in the five-year Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contract, which has a ceiling value of $70 million.

CRAVE contracts will encompass a variety of tasks for all human spaceflight programs supported by the Johnson Space Center Engineering Directorate, including the Space Shuttle, Space Station and Exploration. The awarded contracts relate to areas such as communications, avionics, ventilation systems and space suit modifications and new hand tools for astronauts.

Harris has been entrusted with the task of providing design, development, manufacturing, testing and sustainment of space communications systems and equipment. In addition, the company will support Oceaneering in networking and robotic command and control tasks as required. Because of the advanced research studies the company has conducted and because of the network architectures it has developed, Harris is in a position to provide highly reliable space and terrestrial communications and help solve the agency’s unique, mission-critical program challenges.

Harris has had a long-standing association with NASA. It has participated in a number of NASA programs since the 1960s, including Apollo, Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. Recently, TMCnet reported that Harris Corporation has also been entrusted with modernizing NASA Ground Segment for Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System.

In the present business world scenario where razzmatazz and blitzkrieg are the buzzwords to build up a brand, here lies an industry that is worth over $125 billion and yet we have never heard of any chest-thumping from its top players.

That’s Space Inc, an industry where the goals are infinite. The estimated worth quoted above is merely in the field of satellite manufacturing. If one adds sensory data sale, payload charges, and technological spin-offs, the net worth will manifold. “The potential is humongous,” says Dr K Radhakrishnan, chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). He is quick to point out that the primary job of space sciences, nevertheless, is not money-making.

True, indeed. From ancient sea-farers to astrologers, and from Aryabhatt to Asimov, human kind has always looked upon the skies for direction and guidance, not moolah. But as telecommunication and broadcasting take giant strides globally, piggyriding the advances made in space, it is payback time for the investments made in space sciences.

Understanding this business aspect, India too launched a marketing arm of ISRO, Antrix in 1992. The motive behind such an entity in a state-managed space research organisation was clear: promotion and commercial exploitation of space products, services and transfer of technologies developed by ISRO. “It was a logical step,” says KR Sridhara Murthi, managing director of Antrix.

According to Mr Murthi, commercialisation is one of the dimensions of space activities which developed over the past two decades, particularly in Europe and the US. “Such activity assumed great significance because space applications would service several vertical commercial application connected to broadcasting, communication essentially providing the connectivity, and then also generating information from space which will be useful for resource management and environment studies,” says Mr Murthi. Initially, ISRO entered an alliance with EUSAT corporation to sell its remote sensing data. EUSAT had a network of groundstations and customers world wide. But once gaining entry to this institutionalised market, ISRO diversified its approach to different regions.

Also, today, the data sale is merely 8% of ISRO’s revenue. The big money remains in the area of launch services and leasing out of transponders. Since 1999 when Antrix first launched a third party satellite along with ISRO’s own to earn a few dollars more—by sending 110 kg South Korean Kistsat-3 and 45 kg DLR-Tubsat of Germany—it has launched over 22 small and big foreign satellites, the heaviest one so far being 350-kg Italian satellite Agile in 2007.

On Sunday, June 27, NASA shut down the satellite that was launched into orbit during the space shuttle Challenger’s maiden voyage (STS-6) in April of 1983. From 1983 to 1998, TDRS-1 provided NASA with the ability to communicate with other satellites in orbit.

TDRS, image courtesy of NASANASA reassigned TDRS-1 in 1998 to support the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) U.S. Antarctic Program and others on scientific, educational and operational endeavors. TDRS-1 worked with eight additional satellites to relay data and communications from more than 15 customers, including the NSF, the Hubble Space Telescope, the shuttle, and the International Space Station. The TDRS system provides the capability to send commands and receive data as well as to navigate and talk with crews in orbit.

“TDRS-1 paved the way for this incredible space communications system,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate. “The remaining TDRS satellites, and the new satellites that will be online within three years, will carry on these critical capabilities for many NASA missions, including science and human spaceflight.”

TDRS-1 was the first satellite used to support launches from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the early 1990s, returning real-time telemetry. It eliminated a dead zone over the Indian Ocean, where there previously was no communication, providing full coverage for the space shuttle and low-Earth orbiting satellites. TDRS-1 proved helpful during a 1999 medical emergency at the NSF’s Antarctic Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. The satellite’s high-speed Internet connectivity allowed personnel to conduct telemedicine conferences. Doctors in the United States aided Dr. Jerri Nelson, who had breast cancer, in performing a self-biopsy and administering chemotherapy. Later, in 2002, doctors used TDRS-1 to perform another telemedicine conference with the station to assist in knee surgery for a meteorologist.

Because of its orbit, the satellite was able to link the North and South Poles and relayed the first pole-to-pole phone call. TDRS-1 also transmitted the first internet connection and live webcast from the North Pole and supported the first global television event from the South Pole Station — a worldwide television broadcast to commemorate the beginning of the year 2000. TDRS-1 was instrumental in supporting innovative astronomy and astrophysics research programs at the South Pole Station, including the one-of-a-kind IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the South Pole Radio Telescope. The satellite transmitted gigabytes of science research data to university researchers worldwide on a daily basis.

The first six TDRS satellites were built by TRW Inc. (now Northrop Grumman Corp.). Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems also built three TDRS satellites. NASA plans to launch two additional satellites into the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System by 2013. On June 13, 2010, the satellite arrived at its final destination, approximately 22,500 miles above the Earth. The orbit was stabilized and the remaining fuel removed and NASA then shut down the satellite.