Houston Space Exploration Firm Gets $6.5 Million NASA Deal for Navigation Test
Posted on: Tuesday, 9 September 2003, 06:00 CDT
Sep. 9--NASA has awarded $6.5 million to a Houston space exploration company to launch and test new navigational technologies planned for future unmanned space missions.
Team Encounter, a privately owned company, is expected to place the Inertial Stellar Compass aboard a rocket set to launch in 2005, said Chuck Gay, program executive for the New Millennium Program in the Office of Space Science at NASA headquarters.
It's the first time the agency's space science office has contracted with a private firm to launch a payload on a commercial mission for technology demonstration experiments, NASA officials said.
The New Millennium Program identifies, develops and flight-validates advanced technologies that can lower costs and enable critical performance of future science missions.
"Before a science mission uses these new technologies, we need to validate it in space first," Gay said. "We needed some way to get it into space."
The contract was awarded Aug. 28 by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center after a bid process, Gay said. Don Savage, NASA spokesman, said other firms expressed interest in the project, but only Team Encounter bid on it. NASA announced the award Thursday, Sept. 4.
The project gives NASA "a platform to run their tests" but also is "a big pat on the back" for Team Encounter, said Charles Chafer, the company's president and chief executive officer.
"NASA looked at us and says, 'we think you are qualified to work with us,' " Chafer said.
The compass uses a star camera to tell the spacecraft where it is pointing and gyroscopes to continuously monitor the spacecraft's motion. The gyroscopes also inform the control system how to keep the spacecraft stable and pointed in the right direction, in case the camera is "blinded" by the sun.
Such systems have been in use for a while as individual devices, but never as a small, integral, low-power package, Gay said.
"We see it as very critical technology for future microsats that NASA wants to fly," said Neil Dennehy, contracting officer representative for the project.
In July, Team Encounter, founded by Chafer in 1998, leased a 230-foot diameter radio dish in Ukraine to send an electromagnetic wave for 15 hours aimed at five stars light years from Earth that scientists say may have orbiting planets that could support life. People paid from $2 to $50 to place messages in the signal.
No reply has been received, Team Encounter officials said.
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(c) 2003, Houston Chronicle. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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