NASA on Friday lifted the April 8 stop work order issued to Orbital ATK [OA] for the agency’s Joint Polar Satellite System-2 (JPSS-2) program, according to a NASA spokeswoman.
NASA spokeswoman Karen Northon said in an email the civil space agency directed Orbital ATK to resume work immediately on JPSS-2, a joint NASA-National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite that will provide operational continuity of satellite-based observations and products for NOAA Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES) and Suomi NPP (National Polar-orbiting Partnership) satellites and ground systems.
The resume work order comes one day following the Government Accountability Office (GAO) denial of Ball Aerospace’s [BLL] bid protest of a roughly $470 million delivery order to Orbital ATK in March. Ball argued in April that though Orbital ATK’s total price, plus the options for JPSS-2 and JPSS-4, was lower, Ball’s JPSS-2 proposal was over $25 million less than Orbital ATK’s. Ball argued that if the option for JPSS-3 was included, the company’s overall price was lower.
Ball spokeswoman Roz Brown did not return a request for comment by press time. Brown said July 16 that the company had no intention to ask GAO for reconsideration of its bid protest decision, but would consider the question after receiving and reviewing the public version of the decision. GAO regulations allow companies to ask for bid protest decision reconsideration within 10 days. Otherwise, they can pursue legal remedies in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
NASA in March awarded Orbital ATK a $253 million contract for JPSS-2, with a $130 million option for JPSS-3 and an $87 million option for JPSS-4. The competition, GAO said, was open to contractors holding Rapid Spacecraft Acquisition (RAPID III) indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) contracts, provided the contractor had participated in a JPSS spacecraft accommodation study.
NOAA has a JPSS-2 launch goal of mid-fiscal year 2021, or roughly April 2021 (Defense Daily, Nov. 12).