Space Force targeting more affordable GPS satellites

The House Power needs its subsequent fleet of GPS satellites to be smaller, cheaper and extra resilient — and it’s trying to a mixture of industrial and protection companies to assist design these spacecraft.

4 corporations — Sierra House, L3Harris, Astranis and Axient, which was not too long ago acquired by Astrion — received research contracts in late September to draft early ideas for the House Power’s Resilient GPS program, or R-GPS. In 5 to eight months, the service plans to decide on not less than two corporations to finalize their designs and construct prototypes. It’ll then decide a number of companies to construct the primary eight satellites, which it needs prepared for launch by 2028.

This system, anticipated to value $1 billion over the subsequent 5 years, comes amid rising concern from Pentagon and different authorities leaders about GPS vulnerability. The system, which guides weapons and helps navy models navigate, has been a goal for Russia in its warfare with Ukraine, utilizing digital warfare to jam indicators regularly. Customers have additionally reported elevated spoofing incidents, a technique of manipulating GPS knowledge to confuse a receiver about its location. This may be finished utilizing comparatively low cost software-defined radios.

The House Power is focusing on $50 to $80 million per satellite tv for pc — a fraction of the $250 million it prices for only one Lockheed Martin-build GPS IIIF spacecraft. That decrease unit value will enable the service to launch dozens of satellites designed to fly for about 5 years that may be upgraded with new capabilities on a daily cycle.

The strategy is modeled off the House Improvement Company’s technique for fielding giant constellations of small missile monitoring and knowledge transport satellites and is one which the House Power needs to use to different missions, like area area consciousness. Proliferation, and the decrease unit prices that assist allow it, is what the service hopes will carry resiliency to those constellations.

For GPS, bigger numbers of small satellites augmenting the bigger spacecraft that make up the present constellation ought to make it more durable for enemies to focus on the fleet and can guarantee there’s a backup functionality once they do, the House Power says. The satellites could have a spread of civil indicators in addition to M-code, a safer navy sign with anti-jam capabilities.

Designing for affordability

The companies tapped to attract up ideas for this system advised Protection Information they’re making an attempt to stability affordability with enhanced capabilities as they think about satellite tv for pc design choices.

Erik Daehler, vice chairman of protection, satellites and spacecraft programs at Sierra House, mentioned the corporate’s strategy entails designing modular spacecraft with payloads that may very well be upgraded by means of on-orbit software program upgrades or swapped out in future improvement blocks.

That type of versatile design, he mentioned, might enable the House Power to launch teams of satellites carrying completely different payloads.

“The concept is to remain in entrance of the adversary’s evolution and, actually, get forward of them so that they don’t know what’s launching on every satellite tv for pc that we put up,” Daehler mentioned.

In a extra conventional improvement program, it will probably take years so as to add new functionality onto a scorching manufacturing line of extra advanced satellites. Sierra House needs to make that course of extra seamless, which Daehler mentioned ought to in the end make it extra reasonably priced.

“We wish to make it in order that the potential is an order of magnitude inexpensive than the prevailing constellation and be capable to be upgraded each time you may have a LEAP with minimal impacts,” he mentioned.

Whereas designing the satellite tv for pc for flexibility, the corporate can also be ready to attract a tough line on what’s often called “necessities creep” — the tendency for the Protection Division or different clients to alter necessities in a approach that drives main modifications to a system’s design.

“We’re not redesigning the platform dramatically to match a payload,” Daehler mentioned. “As an alternative, we’re saying, that is the payload capability you possibly can placed on the platform.”

L3Harris, a key participant in U.S. positioning, navigation and timing applications for the final 50 years, plans to attract from that have in its R-GPS design. The corporate is the prime contractor for the Air Power Analysis Laboratory’s experimental PNT program, Navigation Expertise Satellite tv for pc-3, or NTS-3, which is slated to launch within the coming months.

“We’re actually excited to see that get on orbit and begin demonstrating the superior capabilities that come from our capacity to leverage our heritage and pivot into one thing that’s new and progressive,” Andrew Builta, vice chairman of the corporate’s area payload and constellation portfolio, advised Protection Information. “With Resilient GPS, our intent is to marry these two issues.”

L3Harris hasn’t introduced its program companions, however Builta mentioned it’s trying to industrial suppliers for issues like its satellite tv for pc bus and is methods to maintain its schedule as tight as attainable.

“One of many key duties we now have in these early phases is to guage the market from a bus perspective,” he mentioned. “What’s the true timeline for us to have the ability to exit and procure the supplies and get by means of testing and all of the issues that you just want to have the ability to launch a system and be certain that it really works on orbit versus a demo or an experiment?”

Kent Nickle, govt director of speedy built-in area options at Astrion, mentioned the corporate is aiming to drive down value by creating a modular satellite tv for pc designed to “perform a little little bit of every part.”

Within the preliminary research part, the programs engineering agency is on the lookout for the precise strategy to fulfill this system’s baseline necessities and doubtlessly construct on them with extra functionality, like boosted M-code and regional navy safety, which offers further anti-jam expertise.

Astrion’s R-GPS provider group contains K2 House, a startup that can present a satellite tv for pc bus. Radiance Applied sciences will construct the payload and STC will assist with structure and integration.

Nickle, who labored within the Air Power’s area launch enterprise for greater than 15 years, mentioned the House Power’s strategy to R-GPS makes it simpler for smaller, non-traditional companies to be concerned in this system.

“If it was a conventional winner-take-all sort of factor, the federal government’s going to be much less inclined to take dangers,” he mentioned. “They’ve allowed different corporations to take part which, in the long run, advantages all the business, however advantages the federal government too.”

Astranis is a kind of companies that’s new to the PNT mission. Based in 2015, the corporate’s focus is on constructing small, maneuverable satellites for increased orbits, equipping them with top-notch digital processing capabilities.

CEO John Gedmark advised Protection Information that when the House Power began soliciting concepts for R-GPS early this yr, the corporate took a while to think about whether or not its current satellite tv for pc bus and components of its payload had been the precise match for the mission.

“After we spent a while actually digging in on it, the reply was sure,” Gedmark mentioned. “So, we’re leaning ahead on it, and we see big potential right here.”

Astranis is proposing its new line of satellites, Nexus, for R-GPS. It already has orders from clients for greater than 10 satellites, and Gedmark mentioned the corporate is making ready its manufacturing services to construct “many dozens” of satellites within the subsequent few years. The agency has partnered with Xona House Methods to supply PNT algorithms for its payload.

Funding stability

The House Power’s R-GPS technique emphasizes pace, evidenced in its plan to launch the primary satellites inside 4 years.

In April, the Air Power introduced it could use authority from Congress to shift $40 million in funding from elsewhere within the House Power’s price range to start improvement on Resilient R-GPS earlier than it’s authorized as a part of the fiscal 2025 price range cycle. These authorities, often called quick-start, had been authorized within the Fiscal 2024 Nationwide Protection Authorization Act.

Some in Congress have been skeptical of the hassle, questioning whether or not the quick-start course of is the very best pathway. The Home Appropriations protection subcommittee proposed slicing this system’s price range request in its mark of the FY25 protection spending invoice.

“Whereas proliferation could present some benefits, it isn’t clear how these further satellites improve the resilience towards the first jamming risk to GPS, in comparison with various ideas for place, navigation, and timing programs being pursued elsewhere within the Division of Protection,” lawmakers mentioned in a report accompanying the invoice, launched June 12.

Cordell DeLaPena, House Methods Command’s program govt officer for navy communication and PNT, advised reporters final month the service is working with the subcommittee to handle their considerations. Whereas there’s been progress, he mentioned, there are nonetheless a number of open points, together with considerations about whether or not there are sufficient terminals obtainable to help extra GPS satellites.

“Each time we communicate to the [lawmakers], we transfer the ball a little bit bit,” he mentioned.