Space Station Module Developer Gravitic won a $1.7 million contract from the U.S. Space Force to develop orbital platforms that enable responsive space missions.
The contract is part of a larger push by the Force to acquire space capabilities (such as launch, satellite payload integration and even satellite operations) from private industry in timeframes never seen before. The initiative is called tactically responsive space, or TacRS, and it has already led to unprecedented missions: Firefly Space's Alpha rocket left the pad just 27 hours after receiving its launch notice from the Space Force under its TacRS contract. last year.
While Gravitics was unable to provide further details on the exact concept of operations, the startup's co-founder and CMO, Mike DeRosa, clarified in an email that the company will not be putting a module on a rocket for a tactically responsive launch. Instead, the mission is about developing “platforms that enable a new type of tactically responsive space mission,” he said.
The $1.7 million contract was awarded by SpaceWERX in partnership with Space Systems Command's Space Safari Program Office. In a statement, Space Safari's chief operating officer, Lt. Col. Jason Altenhofen, said the Gravitics module “offers an unconventional and potentially revolutionary solution for TacRS.”
“As we look to the future, innovative use of commercial technologies will be an important aspect of solving some of our toughest challenges,” he said.
Gravitics will work with several other companies under the contract, including Rocket Lab, True Anomaly, Space Exploration Engineering and Eta Space. While there are few concrete details about how the companies will work together, the company said the partners “will help refine mission architecture, develop use-case-specific equipment, and develop flight hardware.
Rocket Lab and True Anomaly were awarded separate response space contracts for a mission called Diet haze earlier this month. Under that contract, each company will build spacecraft that will then be rapidly commissioned and ready for in-orbit rendezvous operations.
