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NASA Awards Contract to SES Government Solutions for its Communications Services Project

10 May 2022

SES Government Solutions as been granted a NASA Communications Services Project (CSP) award to support the development and demonstration of near-Earth communication services in support of the agency’s future mission needs.

SES Government Solutions is partnering with Planet Labs and their future Pelican satellite constellation to develop a real time always-on low-rate connectivity solution with SES Government Solutions’s geostationary (GEO) and a real-time high-rate connectivity solution with O3B mPOWER medium earth orbit (MEO) constellations to further future NASA missions. Planet brings over a decade of experience in designing and manufacturing cutting-edge low-cost Earth Observation satellites and radio communication systems.

Of the $278.5 million total contract value for NASA’s CSP, awarded to six different commercial satellite communications (SATCOM) providers, SES Government Solutions has been awarded $28.96 million. SES Government Solutions’s proposed approach demonstrates commercial radio frequency GEO orbiting C-band and MEO Ka-band relay networks for SATCOM services to spacecraft in low earth orbit.  These services include routine missions, contingency operations, launch and ascent, and early operations phase communications.

SES Government Solutions will complete technology development and in-space demonstrations by 2025 to prove its proposed solution will deliver robust, reliable, and cost-effective mission-oriented operations, including the ability for new high-rate and high-capacity two-way communications. NASA intends to seek multiple long-term contracts to acquire services for near-Earth operations by 2030, while phasing out NASA owned & operated systems.

“We are excited to showcase our next generation O3b’s mPOWER MEO satellite constellation that will leverage its high data rates, with low latency Ka-band data relay communications to and from near-Earth orbit NASA assets,” said President and CEO of SES Government Solutions, Brigadier General Pete Hoene, USAF (retired).  “Combining the capabilities of SES, the world’s largest satellite owner/operator with that of Planet, one of the world’s leading commercial imaging companies, will create the world’s first high-throughput commercial space relay service to LEO enabling timely and data-driven decisions.”