LOS ANGELES — Northrop Grumman will drop plans to develop its own business space station and as an alternative assist a competing effort led by Voyager Space, the businesses announced Oct. 4.
Under the brand new partnership, the businesses will cooperate on the event of fully autonomous docking systems for Northrop’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft, allowing it to dock with Voyager’s Starlab space station. The businesses also said they’ll “further explore opportunities to strengthen the event of Starlab” that would include Northrop providing engineering design services for that station. Ars Technica first reported a couple of potential partnership between the businesses.
“This collaboration is a serious step forward for the Starlab program,” said Dylan Taylor, chairman and chief executive of Voyager Space, in a press release. “Northrop Grumman’s technical capability and proven success in cargo resupply services will play a pivotal role as we speed up Starlab’s development.”
The 2 corporations had been independently working on space station concepts. Each were support by funded NASA Space Act Agreements as a part of its Industrial Low Earth Orbit Destinations (CLD) program awarded in late 2021. Those agreements are intended to mature the designs of their stations as a part of NASA efforts to help the event of economic successors to the International Space Station, set to retire in 2030. Voyager Space recently added Airbus Defence and Space to its team, making a three way partnership to enable development of Starlab.
The Voyager-Northrop statement didn’t discuss the longer term of Northrop’s proposed station. Nonetheless, NASA said in a separate statement that Northrop will withdraw from its agreement. The corporate has received $36.6 million out of a complete $125.6 million for achieving certain milestones in that agreement.
The agency spun the partnership as a positive development. “Northrop Grumman has determined that its best strategy is to hitch the Nanoracks team, and NASA respects and supports that call,” said Phil McAlister, director of economic space at NASA Headquarters. Nanoracks is a component of Voyager Space. “We proceed to see a robust competitive landscape for future business destinations, and I’m pleased that Northrop is staying with this system.”
NASA stated it’s going to take the $89 million that Northrop Grumman didn’t receive on its CLD agreement and other, unspecified funding so as to add milestones to the agreements it has with Voyager Space, Blue Origin and Axiom Space, “assuming NASA and the businesses can agree on the extra milestones and value.”
Northrop didn’t indicate within the statement why it decided to now not pursue its own station. Company officials previously discussed challenges with the business case for business stations. Rick Mastracchio, director of strategy and business development at Northrop Grumman Space Systems, said on the ISS Research and Development Conference in August that regulatory and liability challenges, in addition to uncertainties about how international partners can be part of economic stations, were issues that needed to be addressed.
He said at the identical conference that Northrop, even while still developing its own station concept, was offering Cygnus to other business space station providers. One other company official said on the conference that among the many upgrades to Cygnus being studied was one that will allow Cygnus to dock, reasonably than be berthed by a robotic arm because it is today on the ISS.
“We’re fully committed to the longer term of economic LEO,” Steve Krein, vice chairman of civil and business space at Northrop Grumman, said within the Voyager Space statement. “Our latest role with Starlab supports NASA’s initiatives to encourage business space station development as a part of a growing LEO economy.”