Commercial Hosting
TEMPO is the first instrument to be awarded by NASA’s Earth System Science Pathfinder (ESSP) Program in the Earth Venture Instrument Class Series. Earth Venture projects address new scientific priorities using advanced instrumentation carried on airborne platforms, small satellites, or as hosted payloads on larger platforms. The ESSP Program is located at NASA’s Langley Research Center.
© NASA.
The TEMPO Instrument at Maxar being integrated with the spacecraft IS-40e.
© Maxar.
The TEMPO Systems Engineering team delivered NASA’s first Earth Venture Instrument or EVI to Geosynchronous Orbit as NASA’s first complex commercially hosted payload. Made possible through tailoring of NASA’s Systems Engineering processes in a pathfinding effort, TEMPO is now achieving revolutionary Earth Science at a fraction of the cost for a dedicated mission. The cost/schedule centric, just-in-time, commercial production-line approach differs significantly from NASA’s one-of-a-kind R&D approach, as do the realities of serving as a secondary payload to the Host’s primary, revenue-generating transponder payload. The NASA Systems Engineering team balanced cost, schedule, technical quality, and risk against the commercial partners’ Systems Engineering process to lead the diverse, cross-organizational team (composed of NASA, Ball Aerospace, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Carr Astronautics, US Space Force, Maxar Technologies, and Intelsat) to mission success within the Host’s 3.5-year sprint from contract award to launch. This effort represents another step towards commercializing Earth orbiting missions, to free NASA to push the technology and exploration envelopes.
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Lessons learned links: coming soon!
Contact V. Eric Roback for more information commercial hosting: vincent.e.roback@nasa.gov