NASA awarded contracts to Viasat, SES, and Astranis for Ka-band space relay capability concepts, as part of the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program’s Communications Services Project (CSP).
Viasat received the largest contract award for $460.9 million. Global Enterprise Solutions Inc. (which is SES Space & Defense) was contracted for $340.4 million, and Astranis was contracted for $264.3 million.
The awards are firm-fixed-price contracts, but NASA has the option to award additional funding to advance the work from capability concepts to in-orbit flight demonstrations. The work period runs from Nov. 4 through May 3, 2027, with additional priced options to continue work through 2029.
This is part of NASA’s work to replace the aging Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) fleet with commercial services for future missions. TDRS provides information relay services to the International Space Station, Hubble Space Telescope, and other missions. TDRS is expected to support its current missions into the mid-2030s, but it stopped onboarding new missions in late 2024.
According to NASA’s solicitation for the contracts, NASA intends to acquire an end-to-end Ka-band relay service that is backward-compatible with legacy TDRSS users for at least 15 years.
The Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) details three phases: a first 6-month phase for concept maturation and risk reduction; an option for up to two years of system integration, flight demonstration and capability verification and validation; and a third option for up to six months of additional demonstration, anomaly resolution, and service validation.
Both SES and Viasat received contracts in 2022 when NASA started the CSP to explore future commercial options for TDRS.
