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NASA’s Progress Toward Commercial Space Communications—SATCOM Demonstrations and Wideband Multilingual Terminal DevelopmentThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Program is continuing to forge a path toward programmatic and operational transformation enabling commercialization of communications and navigation services to the greatest extent possible for near Earth users. National Space Policy is driving government agencies to incorporate commercial offerings and services to the maximum extent possible. As such, NASA has no plans to build or deploy Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, but will seek to fill NASA mission space-relay capability needs using commercial satellite communications (SATCOM) providers and services. The goal is to support an approach that is both flexible to commercial service constructs and provides continuity of support with current assets as long as required. Progress toward commercialization is advancing in two key areas: (1) awards have been made for demonstrations of SATCOM services, and (2) development of wideband and multilingual user terminals has advanced to the flight demonstration phase.
The Communications Services Project (CSP) at Glenn Research Center (GRC), has awarded Funded Space Act Agreements (FSAA) to six industry vendors. Inmarsat Government Inc., Kuiper Government Solutions (KGS) LLC, SES Government Solutions, Space Exploration Technologies, Telesat U.S. Services LLC, and Viasat Incorporated received a combined $278.5 million to complete technology development and in-space demonstrations over the next several years. The end-to-end service capabilities being targeted are based on existing NASA mission operational needs. Accordingly, each company has proposed a technical approach to lower costs, increase flexibility, and improve performance for a broad range of missions.
In the current market, industry vendors operate at a range of different frequencies and use variable, sometime proprietary, coding and modulations schemes. As NASA strives for a network comprised of services provided by multiple distinct suppliers, interoperability is a fitting solution to unify the network. Wideband and multi-lingual user terminals are being developed to bridge differences in industry services. Building on ground demonstrations completed in 2021, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL) will be flight testing a multi-lingual wideband terminal (payload) and demonstrating connectivity to both government and commercial relay services.

This paper provides a discussion of the progress toward NASA’s commercial space communications goals and consideration of key challenges and next steps.
Document ID
20220006306
Acquisition Source
Headquarters
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Gregory W Heckler
(National Aeronautics and Space Administration Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States)
Date Acquired
April 25, 2022
Subject Category
Space Communications, Spacecraft Communications, Command And Tracking
Meeting Information
Meeting: 27th Ka and Broadband Communications Conference (Ka) and the 39th International Communications Satellite Systems Conference (ICSSC)
Location: Milan
Country: IT
Start Date: October 18, 2022
End Date: October 21, 2022
Sponsors: Communications & Power Industries (United States)
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
Technical Review
NASA Peer Committee
Keywords
space communications
space relay
commercialization
Glenn Research Center
Communications Services Project
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