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NRO goes COTS: "Born Secret" ain't what it used to be...



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Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 01:52:01 -0400
From: Richard Sampson <[email protected]>
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Subject: IP: NRO TO LAUNCH SATELLITE TO EXPLORE TECHNOLOGIES By Frank Wolfe
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NRO TO LAUNCH SATELLITE TO EXPLORE TECHNOLOGIES By Frank Wolfe
  Sep. 23, 1998 (DEFENSE DAILY, Vol. 200, No. 24 via COMTEX) --
CHANTILLY, Va.-The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) plans to launch
the Space Technology Experiment (STEX) satellite Oct. 1 at Vandenberg
AFB, Calif., to test and validate 29 new technologies.

"The NRO recognizes the national need and challenges of providing
future overhead collection systems with good performance at reduced
cost, so we're aggressively pursuing technology options," John Schaub,
the STEX program director, told reporters yesterday at NRO headquarters
here.

The STEX satellite is the first the NRO has announced prior to launch,
officials said. With the end of the Cold War and the shrinking defense
budget, NRO now believes it needs to justify its programs in a more
open forum, officials said.

Launched aboard an Orbital Sciences Corp. [ORB] Taurus launch vehicle,
STEX is designed to explore new commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS)
technologies to enhance future space missions, like overhead
collection, at a lower cost. The 1,540-pound satellite is designed to
last two years in space.

The STEX program began three years ago when NRO partnered with
Lockheed Martin [LMT] in Colorado, the Naval Research Laboratory and
the Air Force Research Laboratory.

The cost of the satellite--its booster, launch costs and ground
support--is less than $90 million, the NRO said.

"Keeping the schedule short was a key contributor to keeping the total
costs low," Schaub said. "It's significantly cheaper."

NRO director Keith Hall has said he wants to increase NRO's research
and development efforts from 8 percent to 10 percent of the agency's
total budget and STEX is part of that plan (Defense Daily, May 26).

STEX is the first in a series of low-cost demonstrations by the NRO's
Advanced Systems and Technology Directorate.

The technologies to be tested aboard STEX include an Electric
Propulsion Demonstration Module using a Russian-built engine, a 51-
gigabit solid state data recorder (the world's largest), multifunction
solar cells, high-density nickel-hydrogen batteries and an Advanced
Tether Experiment, Schaub said.

The NRO hopes the Advanced Tether Experiment, which is to use four
miles of Spectra 1000-reinforced tether deployed from the satellite,
will boost the agency's knowledge about how to do such things as
raising and lowering spacecraft by tethers and how to increase the
survivability of tethered space systems.

"The program has really managed in a streamlined way. We've used
commercial practices attempting to speed the development of low cost
next generation spacecraft. It's the NRO's version of better, faster,
cheaper," Schaub said.

-0-

Copyright Phillips Publishing, Inc.


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-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: [email protected]>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'