Satellite Servicing Heats up with Orbital ATK Suing DARPA
Orbital ATK Sues DARPA Over MDA’s SSL GEO Satellite Servicing Contract, SpaceQ
“The days of on-orbit servicing, or satellite servicing, living in obscurity are over. On February 7, Orbital ATK, Inc. and their subsidiary Space Logistics LLC, filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Virginia to stop the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) from awarding Space Systems Loral (SSL), a subsidiary of Canada’s MDA, a contract to to develop satellite servicing of spacecraft in geostationary orbit (GEO) for the Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) program.”
Related
– DARPA Selects SSL as Commercial Partner for Revolutionary Goal of Servicing Satellites in GEO
– NASA Awards Contract for Refueling Mission Spacecraft
– Orbital ATK sues Pentagon over plans to award a space robots contract to a Canadian-owned firm, Washington Post
“Orbital argues that the federal program, called the Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites, would unfairly compete with its own privately funded effort, a system called the Mission Extension Vehicle 1, backed by at least $200 million from investors. The company has set up at a production facility in Northern Virginia, with a launch planned for next year.”
Can see Orbital ATK dropping suit as this is DARPA whose competitions alone have the chance to shine and earn hundreds of millions just in R&D investments alone, not to mention they are the Mad Scientists of the Military.
Orbital ATK wins they spoil all other companies to work for them and are looked over for other theorized projects, they lose… well they tried to sue DARPA.
DARPA is overrated when it comes to contributions, especially in the spaceflight arena.
The suit may be intended as much as a delaying tactic by Orbital ATK as anything. Orbital was on a panel at the FAA’s yearly Commercial Space Transportation Conference last week. They said that, although their initial MEV/Mission Extension Vehicle will be simplistic and just ‘grab on” (not robotics or servicing) to their first customer; their plan is to, by the time DARPA’s RSGS technology demo flies by 2020/2021, to have 5 MEVs in orbit- at least one of which would have a robotic arm similar, presumably, to DARPA’s.
Orbita was asked and encouraged by DARPA to compete to be its partner in RSGS; they refused to submit. SS/Loral/MDA got it. The RSGS partnership – and it is a cost-sharing partnership – seems to be a good one: SS/Loral/MDA provides the spacecraft bus; DARPA arranges for the launch and provides the front-end tool set. The first thing done is the DARPA technology demo on an unprepared in-orbit geosynch satellite. Once that is done, all of DARPA’s experience and technical data will be provided to ALL US companies.
Then, rather than just blowing up the spacecraft, SS/Loral/MDA gets its return on its investment: for as much fuel as they might have left, they will service any paying customers they can sign up.
Sounds like a good deal for all; for DARPA/DOD/USG; for the satellite servicing industry; and, for SS/Loral/MDA.
MD was the original developer of the Shuttle robotic arm and is based in Canada. But isn’t the parent company, SSL, a US company?
MD bought SSL.
The company in question is now called SSL MDA Holding Company, with it’s corporate hqs in San Francisco and it’s CEO, an American Howard Lance, former CEO of Harris.
But it is owned by Canadians.
http://spacenews.com/mda-fu…
Who owns the stock may not matter if it is incorporated in the US. Apparently MDA is a refugee from North of the Border seeking asylum here.
Too bad ATK couldn’t close the deal to buy MDA (2008). And Orbital couldn’t close the deal to buy SSL (2012). So MDA buys SSL and Orbital and ATK merge (2014), leaving some grouchy folks at the dance.
So how does the successful mission of ‘Orbital Express’ fit into this? DARPA already performed a mission of this type with Ball Aerospace and Boeing. That system was capable of autonomous rendezvous and capture, fuel transfer, HARDWARE transfer and orbit modification. It had robotic arms and mate/demate-able fuel connections. How is this different except OE was demonstrated in LEO?
coincidentally (or maybe not) the picture above in this article is, in fact, the OE mission rendering.