Lunar pathfinder contract signals new procurement model
A contract that will see the first UK satellite enter into orbit around the Moon in 2024 is also notable for the use of the North American Space Agency (NASA)’s procurement model by the European Space Agency (ESA).
Lunar Pathfinder, manufactured by the UK-based Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, will act as relay platform for lunar telecommunications. It will feed the telemetry and data from other spacecraft at the Moon back to Earth, thereby making other missions simpler and cheaper to operate.
As opposed to a ‘traditional’ engineering procurement and construction model, the ESA isn’t funding the development of the Lunar Pathfinder satellite itself.
Rather the contract is an eight-year services where the ESA has purchased a guaranteed proportion of the Lunar Pathfinder’s communications relay capacity once in orbit around the Moon.
WIth the ESA as its ‘anchor customer’, SSTL’s ability to attract external finance and funding is enhanced with investors having a higher degree of confidence of a commercial return on investment.
This is the first occasion that the ESA, which aims to redistribute 85% of its budget in the form of industry contracts, has adopted a procurement model routinely practised by NASA where the space agency sets the requirements, offers seed funding to industry to develop the product solution, and then agrees to purchase the final output service.
Ellon Musk's SpaceX is the classic example of this procurement model in action, producing novel rockets and crew-carrying capsules for use by NASA at a fraction of the cost of more traditional contracting.
“Our procedures are too slow - time to contact, review, the various interactions with these fast-moving companies. This is about internal procedure where I need to work on [the European Space Agency] to be much faster.”
Dr Aschbacher, DG European Space Agency
Lunar Pathfinder is supported by UK Space Agency funding via the ESA and UK defence technology company Qinetiq is working on the development of user terminals, specifically designed for compatibility to the service, for future users to ‘plug and play’ into.
