Space Force reviewing bids from satellite manufacturers for Space Test Program

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force is reviewing bids from satellite manufacturers competing to provide and integrate experiments for the Space Test Program.

Vendors may very well be chosen as early as December for the Space Test Experiments Platform (STEP) 2.0., Lt. Col. Jonathan Shea, head of the DoD Space Test Program on the Space Systems Command, said May 8 during a conference call with reporters.  

The STP office last week issued a revised draft request for proposals for the STEP 2.0 contract and is searching for comments from vendors by May 19. 

The plan is to obtain “commercially developed spacecraft with demonstrated flight heritage to host DoD-sponsored payloads over the following 10 years,” he said. STEP 2.0 shall be an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract.

Vendors picked for the IDIQ will compete for orders that may include constructing a spacecraft, integrate payloads with launch vehicles and supply ground support for on-orbit operations.

The primary task order to be awarded shall be for STP Sat-8, a 12U cubesat projected to launch in 2025. 

Shea said the STEP 2.0 program is trying to benefit from lower-cost industrial buses, especially ESPA-class rings, to bundle as many smallsat experiments as possible right into a single platform. 

“With STEP 2.0, the thought is that we’re going to try to purchase what we will and never have to change,” he said. “We wish to get as many of us who’ve proven flight demonstration on buses right into a form of a consortium that we’re capable of leverage.”

Col. Joseph Roth, director of innovation and prototyping on the Space Systems Command, said he expects several industrial bus manufacturers to compete under the IDIQ. 

Northrop Grumman makes the Long Duration Propulsive ESPA or LDPE, which the Space Force used to deploy experiments. “But there are other manufacturers which might be attempting to get into the ring market,” said Roth. “Any fully qualified bus that has actually flown within the space environment for 12 months can compete for the STEP 2.0 contract, whether it’s Northrop Grumman, Millennium Space, Blue Canyon Technologies, any of the bus providers which have on-orbit heritage.”

Shea said the STP program is seeing a big demand from agencies which might be constructing experiments and wish help getting them to orbit. This yr, not less than 60 candidate experiments — a combination of presidency, academia and personal industry projects — are being considered by the DoD space experiments review board. 

STP relies heavily on ISS

The STP program, established in 1965, on average has sent to orbit 10 to fifteen experiments a yr and is heavily depending on NASA to deploy payloads from the International Space Station. 

The STP program also relies on the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program to fly experiments as rideshares on NSSL missions. It also uses the Space Force small launch program that awards STP missions under an multi-vendor contract referred to as OSP-4.

With more experiments searching for rides and limited funding, “we glance for somebody who’s just got some excess capability we will use and we are going to start playing matchmaker,” said Shea.

Shea said he sees increasing interest in cislunar space experiments and hopes to team up with NASA’s Artemis program to coordinate opportunities.

NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the ISS program office “do the vast majority of the heavy lifting so lots of our experiments can get a subsidized ride to the ISS,” he said. This is far more cost effective than getting experiments into space through other means. 

The vast majority of experiments today are flown either from the ISS or on SpaceX Transporter rideshares, said Shea. If the ISS ceases to operate as projected in 2030, that may very well be “pretty existential” for future STP experiments.

“Anything that desires to go around 400 kilometers circular, we got a fantastic deal for you,” he added. “Once you start talking about more exquisite orbits, like sun-synchronous orbits, higher low Earth orbits, highly elliptical orbits, or especially geostationary or cislunar, “then those opportunities start to diminish dramatically for STP.”