6

Concluding Statement by the Committee

There are four core findings in this report from which the conclusions and recommendations derive in addressing the statement of task:

1. The tremendous growth in commercial space business activity over the past decade has fundamentally changed the landscape for development, opening new doors to the employment of space systems. A New Space ecosystem is rapidly evolving and will happen with or without government participation.
2. For military and intelligence programs, the initial phases of the Hybrid Space Architecture (HSA) represent a working framework for the government use of space to serve multiple information and intelligence needs. HSA will ingest information from both traditional and nontraditional space system elements, meaning that the government can substantially benefit from utilization of the growing commercial space ecosystem. Moreover, by taking a strategic approach to procurements the government can add vitality and focus to the ecosystem by providing growth opportunities and business vectors congruent with government needs.
3. Within the government, a broad set of both traditional and nontraditional users in both the military and civil space user community can greatly benefit from the growing New Space ecosystem. With appropriate training of government managers, incentives, and acquisition strategies, it will be possible for all players to participate with faster and lower cost outcomes.
4. Consistent with the above three findings, the Office of Naval Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as managers of the National Oceanographic Partnership Program and the extended oceanographic science community stand to directly benefit through access to New Space opportunities. In the near term, the approaches discussed in this report open the door to rapid and lower cost technology demonstration flight opportunities. In the longer term, growth of the space ecosystem will also open the door to rapid access, constellations, and other approaches capable of serving Navy and other government applications.

This report arrives at the conjunction of user needs and business capabilities such that the future is hard to predict beyond seeing the commercial sector continue to explosively grow and evolve. Growth and sustained prosperity are not the same, however, so there is a place at the table for the government that needs to be both recognized and acted on in ways that encourage growth serving the full and diverse range of national interests. Such an approach can be both direct through the acquisition process and also indirect through the implementation and

adjudication of standards that open the door to greater commercial participation and greater interchangeability of services within the desired public–private marketplace.

The traditional government space architecture is typically mission-based and predicated on serving individual agency needs. With some notable exceptions involving multi-agency objectives, defense and intelligence-related missions generally occupy one side of the user equation, with civilian-related missions driven by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NOAA, and the U.S. Geological Survey on the other side. A mission-based architecture is characterized by long planning and investment cycles (typically more than 10 years), highly resilient and dependable satellites that are large and few-of-a-kind, large budgets, and a relatively small collection of large corporations to provide the needed systems. It is not an ecosystem in the sense of this report because it is not diverse, and, while robust in a mission sense, it is not self-sustaining due to the asymmetry of continuing government investment without a matching level of business investment.

The burgeoning commercial space industry demonstrates that this traditional approach is not the only way to manage and grow the nation’s space enterprise. Numerous companies, including a few large ones, have built impressive space capabilities in satellite construction, launch services, and associated infrastructure that are creating a multi-faceted and resilient space ecosystem. The nation can benefit by integrating traditional government-based capabilities with the commercial-based approach in ways that grow and sustain the larger ecosystem.

An important step in this direction is HSA, which is an information delivery system capable of ingesting data from multiple platforms in ways that can supply coherent and relevant information to government decision-makers. Although the initial intent of HSA is to support traditional users, in particular the intelligence community and military missions, it is a flexible architecture fully capable of supporting a broad range of traditional and nontraditional government users as well as nongovernment users. Thus, HSA opens an important door to utilization of the commercial space ecosystem that, if appropriately supported and incentivized, could not only benefit government users but also provide the same benefits for a broad range of nongovernment users such as universities, private foundations, and privately financed science.

Last, it is worth comparing the changing environment of space usage with the evolution of aviation over the past century. While aviation differs from space in many ways, the current aviation ecosystem benefits the nation by supporting a wide range of users, from corporations building large airliners to all sorts of mid-size and small companies building a variety of special airplanes and airframes. Moreover, aviation is experiencing its own exciting “New Aviation” transition between the growth of unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous systems, and electric means of air mobility. The associated ecosystem is undergoing growth and change, but its well-developed infrastructure and manufacturing base maintains a ready supply of parts, generates new systems and services, and promotes standards incorporated within a healthy commercial base that provides these services and capabilities at an affordable cost.

The following conclusions and recommendations are not presented in the order in which they appear in the report but are correlated with the five statement of task elements. This approach is intended to provide useful and actionable advice in a way that benefits the broadest range of users and stakeholders.

Task 1: What national missions might benefit in a substantial way from access to a small satellite data collection system and how might that mission depend on the frequency and geographic scope of the data collection? Those benefits might be defined broadly to include military, economic, scientific, educational, and environmental benefits.

CONCLUSION: The Hybrid Space Architecture shows great potential as a framework for a new space ecosystem integrating timely, traditional, and New Space industries to deliver cost-effective and flexible space capabilities in support of a broad array of national missions and objectives. This ecosystem could enable the Office of Naval Research to pursue both its technology demonstration initiative and its long-term applications.

RECOMMENDATION: The Office of Naval Research (ONR) should consider the Hybrid Space Architecture (HSA) framework as an opportunity to fulfill its long-term ocean science objectives. ONR should work with the

U.S. Space Force to tailor its HSA-based approach to serve as a pilot program for other U.S. government and nongovernment users.¹

CONCLUSION: SmallSats are demonstrating their utility in national civil missions with respect to oceanography, meteorology, hydrology, disaster assessment, and other applications associated with the Earth sciences. When applicable, they complement traditional systems in the Hybrid Space Architecture by offering increased temporal and spatial resolution and reduced planning cycles, which permit rapid insertion of new technology over traditional approaches. It is expected that SmallSat technology and sensor capabilities, as well as related services, will expand in the future.

RECOMMENDATION: The U.S. government should actively position itself to take full advantage of the evolving and growing capabilities of the commercial space sector to serve the broadest spectrum of traditional and nontraditional users, with applications to oceanographic and coastal data as an initial effort to experiment with new processes and procedures.

Task 2: What partnerships among industry, government, and academic institutions might be incentivized to develop the necessary space platform, system integration, launch, communications, test, data distribution, and maintenance functions?

CONCLUSION: SmallSat mission partnerships between the U.S. government and academic institutions have produced high-value/low-cost advancements in space science and technology, including satellite platforms and payloads, ground segment communications, mission and payload operations, and science data product generation and distribution.

RECOMMENDATION: As part of its ongoing relationship with academic institutions, the Office of Naval Research should examine emerging advanced sensor and associated technology opportunities that benefit future ocean science objectives and missions.²

CONCLUSION: The commercial space industry’s tremendous growth and rapid evolution have generated high-profile successes, and signs indicate that this trend will continue to accelerate. The U.S. government, including traditional governmental space users, could benefit greatly from less traditional relationships, such as public–private partnerships, that enable the adoption of industry’s technology and volume manufacturing capabilities.

RECOMMENDATION: The U.S. government should encourage the development of public–private partnerships, potentially including anchor tenancies, to promote a new national space ecosystem supportive of industry, government, and academic objectives.

Task 3: Is the existing infrastructure sufficient to support the needed space platform development and manufacture, system integration, launch, communications, test, data distribution, and maintenance functions? What infrastructure components should be enhanced or created in order to reduce the timeline from idea to on-orbit? Infrastructure is broadly defined to include industrial manufacturing capability, space system support structures, and communication-information systems.

CONCLUSION: Currently, no existing mechanism permits forecasting future government needs to proactively inform the commercial space sector such that it can focus and prioritize the direction of its future investments.

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¹ This recommendation was edited after release to the sponsor to direct it to ONR rather than the broader National Oceanographic Partnership Program. This clarifies that the recommendation is aimed at enabling ONR’s long-term ocean science objectives.

² This recommendation was edited after release to the sponsor to delete reference to the National Oceanographic Partnership Program. This clarifies that the committee is recommending that ONR take this step in support of its own objectives and missions.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Rapid Spacecraft Development Office has addressed this forecasting problem related to indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity satellite bus acquisitions through the development of its Rapid Spacecraft Catalog satellite catalog.

RECOMMENDATION: The Office of Naval Research should leverage the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Rapid Spacecraft Catalog for its current needs and should also work with NASA’s Rapid Spacecraft Development Office and the Air Force Research Laboratory’s AFWERX to incorporate its forecasted future needs.

CONCLUSION: Existing interoperability standards are primarily driven by traditional system constructs and impede the government’s access to flexible and adaptable commercial services. The U.S. government and commercial stakeholders will increasingly rely more heavily upon integrated commercial services and advancing standards to establish a broad-based ecosystem, enabling smoother transition paths among spacecraft development, payload integration, test, launch services, operations management, and data product production. Development and adoption of interoperability standards driven by unique commercial New Space needs and design practices for key systems will increase competition and enable efficient execution and management for a broad range of space mission and operational needs for current and future government users.

RECOMMENDATION: Key systems—those most appropriate for standards—should be jointly developed and actively managed to support the New Space public–private partnerships in ways that promote the greatest acceptance and usage on future systems. Standards and best practices could be developed within organizations such as the Air Force Research Laboratory’s AFWERX, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Small Spacecraft Systems Virtual Institute, and the Small Payload Rideshare Association to facilitate the adoption of New Space business product capabilities.

CONCLUSION: The technical infrastructure required to support needed services in the New Space ecosystem currently exists or is expected to come into existence if actively enabled through expanding government procurement opportunities. However, the U.S. government space community’s current and potential future exploitation of that infrastructure is impeded by lack of familiarity with existing technical capabilities as well as new capabilities evolving out of the rapid growth of the commercial space industry. In the case of the Office of Naval Research, space science procurement practices are artificially constrained by traditional approaches in ways that limit them from taking full advantage of available New Space opportunities related to the rapid demonstration of the ocean and coastal sensor technologies under development for the National Oceanographic Partnership Program.

RECOMMENDATION: The Office of Naval Research together with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as the joint managers of the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP), should explore the broad range of available contractual mechanisms that enable quicker deployment of commercial space capabilities in pursuit of the NOPP technology demonstration objectives. It should empower its acquisition workforce to take full advantage of the rapidly evolving commercial space system opportunities.

CONCLUSION: The federal procurement regime—both the statutory and regulatory schemes—provides sufficient flexibility to take advantage of the evolving commercial marketplace and employ innovative approaches such as public–private partnerships and other forms of contractual relationships including Other Transactions Authority and Space Enterprise Consortium.

RECOMMENDATION: The U.S. government should employ a full range of available contractual mechanisms and actively support the use of innovative business models required to fully engage with both the traditional space and New Space commercial industries. These include a range of options from public–private partnerships and commercial services contracts, as well as newer mid-tier acquisition options in the categories of rapid prototyping and rapid fielding.

Task 4: What processes may be employed to enhance the technology development pipeline, standards development, and the identification and adoption of best practices?

CONCLUSION: The rapid expansion of space systems and operations knowledge throughout the commercial space industry provides numerous opportunities for the Hybrid Space Architecture and other U.S. government space initiatives. Clearly stated standards and best practices, in conjunction with procurement mechanisms that address and accelerate decision speed, address mission risk, and align incentives, would allow efficient U.S. government access to these new capabilities. Procurement mechanisms tailored to commercial business models could further support responsive schedules from initiative inception to on-orbit capability.

RECOMMENDATION: U.S. government procurement mechanisms should be tailored to embrace evolving commercial practices and appropriate standards to address and accelerate decision speed, management of mission risk, and alignment of incentives to rapidly enable government space initiatives.

CONCLUSION: A coordinated government effort to promote and oversee existing government programs, together with the exploitation of dual-use technologies (evolving out of the automotive, medical, gaming, and other industries) could enhance the existing technology pipeline and benefit all national space activities. The Air Force Research Laboratory’s AFWERX, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Small Spacecraft Technology Program, the government’s Small Business Innovative Research program, and the government’s Small Business Technology Transfer program are the appropriate venues for such technology infusion and demonstration.

RECOMMENDATION: The Office of Naval Research (ONR) should take full advantage of opportunities for the infusion of dual-use technologies deriving from participation in existing government technology development programs such as the Air Force Research Laboratory’s AFWERX, the Small Spacecraft Technology Program, the government’s Small Business Innovative Research program, and the government’s Small Business Technology Transfer program.

Task 5: What is the anticipated timeline for the development of the required technology, infrastructure, and processes that will enable the development of the desired satellite systems?

CONCLUSION: The development and adoption of the Hybrid Space Architecture (HSA) framework offers a potential roadmap to establish the timeline of SmallSat system capabilities for national needs. However, the capacity for building SmallSat services can be accelerated by the alignment of commercial SmallSat capabilities to HSA needs—this would reduce the time needed to reach a fully capable space ecosystem. Similarly, market-driven forces and sustained government investment programs could also accelerate technology, infrastructure, and process support responsive to customer and community needs and requirements.

RECOMMENDATION: The U.S. government should incentivize private investment to achieve faster and more integrated outcomes through advanced acquisition strategies such as public–private partnerships, establishing Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity contracts with commercial providers, and anchor tenancy where the government is a stable facilitator for achieving faster and more integrated outcomes.

CONCLUSION: The commercial space sector appears fully capable of meeting the ocean sensor technology demonstration flight and launch needs of the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) as presented to the committee. Many of these capabilities are accessible to NOPP today, through a variety of contractual mechanisms. Furthermore, these capabilities are expected to grow and evolve in concert with Hybrid Space Architecture–driven U.S. Space Force and other government procurements over the next 5 years keeping pace with the NOPP objectives.

RECOMMENDATION: Innovative procurement practices offer substantial benefits, both in cost and the pace of flight, to meet government, and specifically, National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) requirements. Depending on technology readiness and mission requirements, NOPP should consider the following options:

1. Engage nascent commercial broker capabilities to explore and form appropriate partnerships to match existing and emerging commercial capabilities to achieve desired technical outcomes;
2. Explore existing government programs and consortiums, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration International Space Station or the Space Enterprise Consortium, and other programs that support technology prototyping and rideshare opportunities consistent with desired space flight objectives;
3. Engage a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) or a similar impartial agent as a trusted intermediary between interested government and commercial business entities to identify appropriate public–private partnership mechanisms and structure them to achieve a successful alignment of technical and procurement capabilities; and
4. Similarly employ an FFRDC or similarly trusted agent to develop guidelines for technical and business engagement to actively bridge existing gaps and new gaps as they occur between government and industry.