Space missions rely on private sector engagement, NASA official says
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon spacecraft atop takes off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on October 05, 2022 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. A NASA official said recently that continued engagement with commercial contractors is essential to the U.S. space program. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
The space agency needs to work more closely with its commercial providers to meet critical flight requirements.
NASA’s ongoing efforts to launch Earth-observing satellites and unmanned probes into space are dependent upon private sector collaboration, according to an official with the nation’s space agency.
Akash Vangani — deputy chief engineer for NASA's Launch Services Program — said during a GovExec event on Aug. 28, that the agency’s launch of critical scientific and robotic payloads would likely not be possible without the cost-saving nature of these commercial partnerships.
“We're using commercial, which gives a great value to the taxpayers because our satellites are so unique and so expensive,” Vangani said, adding that “no one's going to insure us, and so we are — like my team — is that mission assurance.”
Vangani said all of the recently launched low-Earth satellites “are the launches that we do, and we're unique that we do that with commercial rockets.” This included NASA’s June launch of its fourth and final Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites — or GOES — the most advanced geostationary weather satellite placed in orbit.
NASA has been using companies like SpaceX and United Launch Alliance to power these launches, and Vangani said the space agency plans to use Blue Origin rockets in the future. These types of partnerships allow NASA personnel to focus more on the mechanics of the satellites themselves and then work out the launch logistics with the providers.
“We make sure that all the requirements that those satellites or robots need are met, and then our ultimate job is to make sure that they safely go into orbit,” Vangani said. “So we provide insight and oversight of our contractors, like SpaceX and ULA, while making sure that all the requirements for our satellites are met.”
As the launch and performance standards for these satellites get more rigorous, however, Vangani said it’s critical for NASA “to work with these providers — with our providers — to go ahead and change a lot of the requirements in the way that we do business.”
He noted that SpaceX has launched a number of Starlink satellites into orbit, but that these are “very simple spacecraft overall.” Comparatively, Vangani said NASA’s probes “are very complicated.”
“We need some crazy temperature requirements, or we need purges to make sure our instruments will survive in space,” he said. “And so a lot of it is just working with those launch vehicle providers to make sure that they can meet the requirements. And the requirements are getting more and more challenging as we're pushing the boundaries of space.”