News Briefs

By Space News Staff

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U.S. Air Force Requests Launch Service Proposals

The U.S. Air Force released a final request for proposals May 11 from companies capable of launching small and medium-sized satellites to low Earth orbit.

The Orbital/Suborbital Program-3 (OSP-3) solicitation, posted on the Federal Business Opportunities website, offers an opportunity for new entrants into the market for launching military payloads. The service intends to award up to six indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts over a five-year period with a combined cost ceiling of $900 million, Air Force spokeswoman Maj. Tracy Bunko wrote in a May 18 email.

Contract awards are expected to begin in early fall.

The OSP-3 mission set is split into two lanes, according to the solicitation. One is for launching payloads weighing up to 1,800 kilograms into low Earth orbit or on long-range suborbital missions; the other is for bigger satellites, weighing as much as 9,000 kilograms, into low Earth orbit.

The solicitation includes launches of the civilian Deep Space Climate Observatory in 2014 and the Space Test Program-2 satellite in 2015. Both missions have been set aside for new market entrants, meaning United Launch Alliance, which launches the vast majority of U.S. government payloads, is not eligible to compete.

 

DirecTV To Offer Bundled Satellite Internet Services

U.S. satellite television provider DirecTV on May 16 said it will provide bundled television and broadband Internet packages using ViaSat’s Exede satellite broadband service, powered by the ViaSat-1 Ka-band satellite, and the competing HughesNet Gen4 service to debut later this year.

ViaSat-1, the world’s highest-throughput broadband satellite, has been in service since January. Hughes’ EchoStar 17, formerly named Jupiter, is a ViaSat-1 lookalike scheduled for launch in late June.

El Segundo, Calif.-based DirecTV, which has extensive experience in using Ka-band satellite frequencies to provide direct-to-home television programming, said it would announce a pricing formula at a later date. The service will offer download speeds of 10 megabits per second or more.

DirecTV competitor Dish Network of Englewood, Colo., began providing bundled television/Internet packages on ViaSat-1 this year. It is unclear whether Dish will continue the ViaSat service once EchoStar 17 is operational. Dish and EchoStar are both owned by Charlie Ergen. EchoStar owns Germantown, Md.-based Hughes, which is ViaSat’s principal U.S. competitor.

ViaSat-1 and EchoStar 17, built by Space Systems/Loral of Palo Alto, Calif., each are designed to provide up to 140 gigabits per second of throughput, or 14 times the capacity of Hughes’ Spaceway 3 satellite, which now handles most HughesNet customers.