The Spaceport Company (TSC) on Tuesday said it has been awarded a contract by the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to conduct a prototype launch this year from a sea-based vessel that will test “autonomy-like features” of the mobile platform and demonstrate expanded equatorial launch capacity.
The Phase 1 award was made in April and is for more than $2.5 million with launch of a “sounding rocket-sized vehicle” slated to occur before the end of 2024 in the Gulf of Mexico using the company’s “highly-customized, proprietary launch vessel,” Tom Marotta, TSC’s CEO and founder, told Defense Daily
in an email reply to questions.
The award was made under DIU’s Novel Responsive Space Delivery (NRSD) project, which aims to prototype commercial solutions that meet Defense Department demands for logistics support to, through, and from space. The agency is planning further NRSD awards.
“Demand for launch sites exceeds supply, and building new launch sites on land is blocked by environmental concerns and community opposition,” Marotta said in a statement. “Furthermore, commercial launch companies seek a future with fleets of rockets delivering tons of cargo to and from orbit on an hourly basis. The only viable way to build enough launch site infrastructure to support such a vision is to built it on ships at sea.”
Development of the mobile sea-based platform is ongoing and the more news on this is expected in the coming weeks, Marotta said. On its website, the company shows a concept of operations where a rocket is loaded onto the vessel dockside, and then the vessel transits to sea where the rocket is launched using TSC’s proprietary software and procedures.
TSC said that the Phase 1 effort could lead to DIU awarding future modular phases.
Austin Baker, deputy portfolio director for DIU’s space portfolio, said in a statement that the responses to the NRSD solicitation “was tremendous.”
In June 2023, TSC said it had received a $1.5 million award from DIU to develop a mobile, sea-based spaceport for delivering satellites to orbit. Marotta said that the first iteration of the platform is focused on launch while future iterations will support launch and landing.
In May 2023, the company conducted multiple rocket launches in one day from a modified ship in the Gulf of Mexico, successfully testing all procedures for an orbital-class launch including obtaining regulatory approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration, the Coast Guard, scheduling, control of public access, range surveillance, hazard clearance, airspace integration, anomaly response, and remote launch vehicle ignition at sea.