NARRATOR
NASA has long relied on commercial industry for critical space communications and navigation services and support. Government-owned, contractor-operated infrastructure was fundamental to the success of the agency’s earliest missions. Commercial partnerships have provided NASA with the workforce needed to operate a global network of ground stations, to upgrade and maintain their antennas, and to build the telecommunications satellites that support missions like the International Space Station.
Today, in a paradigm shift that seeks to help nurture the U.S. space economy, NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation program, or SCaN, is embracing commercialization even further.
NASA plans to rely primarily on industry-provided communications services for missions close to Earth by 2030. Rather than using government-owned relay satellites and ground stations, SCaN will work with private industry to furnish missions with comprehensive, commercial network services. In order to make this bold objective a reality, NASA is fostering new entrants into the space communications marketplace.
I’m Danny Baird. This is the Invisible Network.
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GREG HECKLER
SCaN started as a formal headquarters program in 2006. You know, commercialization has been part of our overall… architecture — how we provide services to users — since the beginning… Our most recent decision… is that we think — measuring the market and where people’s technical capabilities are — that we don’t need to go build out necessarily NASA-owned and -operated capacity in the future. There’s enough vendors, they have enough operational history, that we can start to rely on them for the vast majority, if not 100%, of our comm and nav services in the near-Earth domain.
NARRATOR
Greg Heckler serves as the engineering manager for the Network Services Division of SCaN at NASA Headquarters in Washington. He’s been working on SCaN’s commercialization efforts for a while now, focusing on near-space, a region that extends from low-Earth orbit, or LEO, out to geosynchronous orbit, some 22,000 miles in altitude, roughly 1/10 the distance to the Moon.
GREG HECKLER
It’s in alignment with NASA’s overall strategy, right? We want to try to encourage what we’re calling a LEO commercial space environment. We can’t do it all ourselves, right? We don’t have enough dollars to do that. But we’re trying to make key investments. Drive dollars into key places to allow this larger ecosystem to evolve.
NARRATOR
The near-space region is filled with user missions in a variety of disciplines ranging from Earth science to astrophysics. The International Space Station flies in low-Earth orbit, about 250 miles above Earth. Deep space missions must ascend through the region before their long journeys to destinations like Mars, the asteroid belt, or the outer planets. In the future, what can these missions expect from a commercial communications paradigm?
GREG HECKLER
I think they will have access to more capacity — more capability — and in a cheaper way than we could provide ourselves, right?…There’s enough demand outside of NASA — other government agencies, international space agencies, and even… commercial space entities themselves — that we’re no longer going to be the anchor tenant, or even a driving customer.
…By going in and bringing those commercial vendors out there into our ecosystem — and offering those to our users — they have access to a lot more capacity. This helps mission design, right?
NARRATOR
The benefits aren’t just for missions. There’s the obvious benefit to the commercial companies developing new capabilities — some of which could be used by consumers — but there’s also enormous benefit to the agency. It frees up resources.
GREG HECKLER
Significantly for NASA, that means we don’t have to carry… operations and maintenance costs from here — basically — forever into the future. And so to us, it makes a lot of sense. The economics are pushing us in this direction. The technical capability of the vendors are pushing in this direction. There’ll be some risk. We’ll see vendors come and go, but we have means of addressing those risks while still meeting our obligations to our users.
NARRATOR
As the commercial marketplace matures, what is NASA’s role in space communications? Largely, it remains the same. It’s a role the agency has played for decades.
GREG HECKLER
We need to be there to drive the market, right? We need to represent the agency on not only what our users do today, but what they want in five and 10 and 15 years down the road… We do that inside the agency. And we use that to plan how we evolve our network architecture… The other thing we can do is around interoperability and standards… We want to be a champion of emerging commercially defined standards, that we hope we can get enough of these entities together to agree to.
NASA historically… our position has been not to do explicitly what the industry can do, right? We’re there to do the new things, the things where it takes government investment to make something happen… So by reducing our focus on operations and maintenance of government systems over time and potentially… realizing some cost efficiencies, then we can focus on the things that… really excite us… So we really need to be focused on supporting the agency’s goals and endeavors in those places where it’s not a realistic expectation to stand up a commercial market.
NARRATOR
Now the question remains: How will SCaN help nurture commercial industry to create this competitive environment? What steps is NASA taking to foster this new marketplace? Two NASA centers with over a century of combined space communications experience are leading the effort.
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NARRATOR
At NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, the SCaN community has long endeavored to advance communications technology, researching innovations like cognitive radios, artificial intelligence, and quantum networking. For the commercialization effort:
ELI NAFFAH
We’re working on the SATCOM piece — so the satellite communications.
NARRATOR
Eli Naffah serves as the project manager for Glenn’s Communications Services Project, or CSP.
ELI NAFFAH
CSP is a new project in formulation to explore the feasibility of commercial SATCOM services for NASA missions… NASA has embarked on, really kind of an evolution… to take operations and, and the things that we used to do in low-Earth orbit routinely and start turning that over to the commercial sector…
If you look at the evolution of the industry in low-Earth orbit, the first thing that NASA embarked on was the Commercial Cargo or the Commercial Orbital Transportation System, which is now you know, a true market. You can see the success that we’ve had with Commercial Cargo going to space station, and then the next step was a Commercial Crew Program… And so the evolution also is now stretching to communications and navigation.
NARRATOR
SATCOM satellites provide space relay services, acting as a conduit for data. They’re essentially an intermediary between ground stations and spacecraft. Space relays can provide more coverage than a single ground station. A collection of them can provide near-continuous communications to LEO satellites. These types of services are critical to flagship missions like the space station or the Hubble Space Telescope.
ELI NAFFAH
So, the idea is to eventually prove the feasibility of commercial SATCOM services… to create a market where we can be one of many buyers of those types of services, and then eventually divest ourselves of the infrastructure that we currently have, at least in the near-Earth regime.
NARRATOR
NASA’s current SATCOM system is called the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite constellation, or TDRS. The last in the third generation of these satellites, TDRS-13, launched in 2017, replenishing the fleet. The constellation will continue to support users for many years to come, but NASA has no plans to build any more TDRS satellites of its own.
THOMAS KACPURA
When that system was initially developed, there was only a handful of satellites that were commercial that were flying at that time.
NARRATOR
That’s Thomas Kacpura. He serves as deputy project manager of the Communications Services Project.
THOMAS KACPURA
And that work was done back in the 80s. And actually, some of the development work was really done in the 1970s. And so, you had a handful of satellites back then. Now… there’s literally thousands of commercial satellites that are up there. And every day, there’s more that are being added to it…
And ultimately, I think that.. rather than buying a satellite – now we can go out and actually buy and specify a service. And that’s what part of the work that we’re trying to take a look at. It’s trying to figure out, what are those next steps?
NARRATOR
How can NASA motivate commercial industry to develop the capabilities SCaN needs? What model will they follow. Once again, Eli Naffah:
ELI NAFFAH
So, when you look at what Commercial Orbital Transportation System did, they essentially became investors in… a capability. And so that’s what we’re intending to do. We’re kind of following the model that they set of really not setting specific requirements, but laying out goals and what we’re interested in buying in the future…
There’s no real technology development that’s required here. Industry is pretty mature… Typically, industry right now is serving terrestrial markets. So, they have a lot of infrastructure for providing a comm and nav solutions for terrestrial users… on the ground, in the air, or at sea. And so, the question is, can they provide those same capabilities or similar capabilities to a spacecraft?
NARRATOR
The answer, they think, is a resounding, “Yes.” The commercial aerospace industry has evolved so much over the decades since NASA launched the first TDRS satellite. Further, the benefits of embracing industry-developed capabilities are too good to pass up.
ELI NAFFAH
So, it’s not just driving the cost down for us, and divesting ourselves of the infrastructure and having to maintain that but it’s also about improving performance and capability eventually… The ultimate goal is to have… an internet in the sky… When cell phones first came out… you didn’t want to roam… If you left your network, you were going to get hit with a big bill.
And then, industry finally figured out that if they built in interoperability into their networks — so that a cell phone could easily switch from one network to another depending on the location — that it would increase the use of cell phones overall and increase their market share. And so, they decided to develop commercial interoperability standards.
So, I think ultimately, that’s where we would like to be in space. Is to be able to have the flexibility to roam in space between networks, depending on what would be available.
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NARRATOR
At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, communications engineers are working with commercial enterprise to develop industry capabilities that could supplement Goddard-managed infrastructure like TDRS and their collection of direct-to-Earth ground stations.
LaNetra Tate serves as the deputy program manager for execution of the Exploration and Space Communications (ESC) projects division, which provides communications services to many NASA missions. LaNetra also serves as the acting chief of the Commercialization, Innovation, and Synergies office, or CIS.
LANETRA TATE
SCaN has seen that the market is ready and mature to be at the forefront of providing communications and navigation services to users and to customers. And I think we see this as an alliance between industry and government, with industry leading and NASA really serving as — I like to say — a cornerstone to drive standardization and interoperability… Goddard has a long history in space communications and navigation and, you know, there’s a team that is both strategic and tactical — and really, really poised to support this commercialization effort in partnership with SCaN.
NARRATOR
Goddard and ESC are meeting SCaN’s commercialization goals through their newly established Near Space Network enterprise. This enterprise subsumed a collection of projects that previously provided communications services into three new efforts.
CIS garners new entrants into the space communications marketplace. The Near Space Network project, or NSN, provides services from the marketplace and helps user missions to develop their communications architectures. The Advanced Communications Capabilities for Exploration and Science Systems project, or ACCESS, supplies the marketplace with services from NASA’s portfolio of government-owned, contractor-operated infrastructure like TDRS and ground stations worldwide.
LANETRA TATE
CIS, the Near Space Network project, and ACCESS will really change the landscape of how we provide communications services… I’m just so excited to be a part of such a great team that we are actively working to define… the next 60 years.
NARRATOR
And how is CIS defining the next 60 years in the near-term?
LANETRA TATE
We have developed a series of industry engagement activities that really bring about awareness to the to the potential providers of how they can join or be a part of the Near Space Network.
We have sessions like the OneLink session, which is a one-hour briefing for industry to hear from us. Then we have another session called… the UpLink session. And that’s a one-hour one-on-one session, where industry can talk about their capabilities directly with our subject matter experts within the Near Space Network. Then we have these really engaging activities called the BEAM session, which is really bridging potential providers with users… And another type of activity that we’re looking at is called an Amplifier… So, the Amplifier session is a one-day workshop, where we… work and we engage with small startups or entrepreneurs… One that is probably very exciting… is we call Ignite the Flight, and this is a pitch competition. It’s going to run twice a year, and it’s really our way of looking for disruptive future comm and nav capabilities.
Those are just a few things that we’re doing on the industry side. And then we’ll we’re also planning of how we proactively engage on the mission side.
NARRATOR
But what does LaNetra think these markets will look like? She echoed many of the sentiments of her colleagues at Glenn Research Center and NASA Headquarters:
LANETRA TATE
I think the marketplace looks like an environment that sees partnerships… really with a shared vision, and an opportunity to promote cost effective solutions. I see a marketplace that has a common set of standards… I think another area is a firm commitment on how we approach… IT security… As we move into more cloud services — we move more into colocation of RF equipment and sharing of equipment — you know, there has to be an assessment of security protocols and resiliency.
NASA can’t do it by it by ourselves, and industry can’t do it by themselves. But a shared collaboration and a shared vision of being able to identify challenges, overcome the challenges… and I think that’s how I see the future marketplace.
NARRATOR
Establishing this future marketplace takes all of the agency’s communications and navigation community working together toward SCaN’s shared vision.
LANETRA TATE
I think the combination between SCaN, and Goddard, and JPL, and Glenn Research Center really offers a great collaboration of NASA as a whole, really working with industry as a whole to really define the next 60 years of communications and navigation services.
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NARRATOR
It’s hard to express the immense importance of these commercialization activities. While the Commercial Crew Program has garnered a lot of interest from the public, SCaN’s game-changing efforts to establish a commercial marketplace are mostly celebrated by those directly involved. As the name of this podcast reminds us, mission-enabling infrastructure is often “invisible,” unnoticed because it works so well.
ANNOUNCER
Touchdown confirmed. Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the signs of past life.
NARRATOR
Recently, I watched the Perseverance Rover touch down on the surface of Mars. Mission updates from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California excited millions around the world. They tuned in to see and hear the strange sights and sounds of the Red Planet.
Behind the scenes, communications and navigation professionals enabled Perseverance’s gentle touchdown on the Martian surface and the transmission of these incredible pieces of media.
GREG HECKLER
SCaN is a key part of every mission, but it’s not well known in the agency. We’re an enabling organization… We don’t get the tweets and the YouTube views like Perseverance… but that video — that video that we all watched the other day —…We would not [have] been able to deliver those images back to the Earth without SCaN, and communications and navigation capabilities, and capacity we give to the agency.
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NARRATOR
This commercialization-focused season of “The Invisible Network” debuted in May of 2021. Our next season will focus on the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration and debut after the launch of the mission later this year.
The podcast is produced by the Space Communications and Navigation program, or SCaN, out of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Episodes were written and recorded by me, Danny Baird, with editorial support from Katherine Schauer. Our public affairs officers are Lora Bleacher of Goddard’s Office of Communications and Kathryn Hambleton of the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.
Special thanks to Barbara Adde, SCaN Policy and Strategic Communications director, Rob Garner, Goddard Web Team lead, and all those who have leant their time, talent and expertise to making “The Invisible Network” a reality. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. For transcripts of the episodes, visit NASA.gov/invisible. To learn more about the vital role that space communications plays in NASA’s mission, visit NASA.gov/SCaN. And for more NASA podcast offerings, visit NASA.gov/podcasts