The Air Force recently awarded $800,000 contracts to three companies to study the feasibility of accommodating a NASA earth science instrument as a hosted payload on spacecraft.

Boeing [BA], Orbital Sciences [ORB] and Space Systems/Loral (SSL) were each awarded six-month period of performance contracts for NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) study program, according to the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (AFSMC). The contracts will determine the feasibility of accommodating the TEMPO instrument as a hosted payload on a spacecraft bound for geostationary earth orbit (GEO).

Artist's illustration of NASA's TEMPO concept. Photo: Space Systems Loral.
Artist’s illustration of NASA’s TEMPO concept. Photo: Space Systems Loral.

The Air Force anticipates that an operational TEMPO mission contract award will follow in mid-2015. The goal for this mission is to integrate the NASA hosted payload onto a commercial satellite bus in 2018 and for the satellite to be launched no later than 2020.

TEMPO will measure atmospheric pollution covering most of North America, from Mexico City to the Canadian tar/oil sands, and from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans hourly and at high spatial resolution, according to NASA. TEMPO’s measurements from GEO of tropospheric ozone, ozone precursors, aerosols and clouds will create a revolutionary dataset that provides understanding and improves prediction of air quality and climate forcing.

The TEMPO awards are the first as part of the Air Force’s Hosted Payload Solutions (HoPS) program, an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) contract meant to provide the United States government a rapid and flexible means to acquire commercial hosting capabilities for government payloads. Companies competed to be included in each lane or both lanes: GEO and medium-earth orbit/low-earth orbit (MEO/LEO) hosting opportunities.

Companies selected for GEO were: Astrium Services Government, Harris Corp. Government Communications Systems Business Unit [HRS], Space Systems/Loral, Surrey Satellite Technology, Orbital Sciences, Boeing, Lockheed Martin [LMT], Merging Excellence and Innovation Technologies (MEI Technologies), ViviSat, Intelsat General, SES Government Solutions and Eutelsat America Corp.

Companies selected for MEO/LEO were: Astrium Services Government, Harris Corp. Government Communications Systems Business Unit, Space Systems/Loral, Millennium Engineering and Integration Company, Surrey Satellite Technology, Orbital Sciences, Boeing and Exoterra Resources.

HoPS provides flexibility for up to six hosted payloads and a total value of $495 million. The Air Force warned in a late July statement that HoPS study contracts may not materialize into future missions.

Hosting government payloads on commercial satellites would help the Air Force meet a goal of making space access more affordable by leveraging commercial best practices for affordable mission assurance processes and utilizing already established commercial venture.