NASA Looks to Farm Out Its Data Network

WASHINGTON — Getting a picture on your television from the surface of Mars--or any of the locales in the solar system frequented by NASA--is an engineering marvel that seems more routine every year.

Nobody operates as sophisticated a space communication network as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which is in contact with probes beyond the orbit of Pluto.

But the space agency’s nifty technology is no bargain, consisting of an army of technicians at antenna farms spanning the globe. Facing ever-tighter budgets, the agency is now preparing to spin off that network in a massive privatization contract.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin are bidding for the award, the first time that the aerospace titans have met head on in a major government competition since the series of mergers that created them in their current form.

Up for grabs is $5 billion to $6 billion worth of business over the next decade and leadership in the technology of operating complex space data networks. The winner will be poised to pursue an even larger potential prize: the military and commercial ground data networks that crisscross the globe.

Aerospace analyst Joe Campbell of Lehman Bros. estimates that the U.S. military market alone is several times larger than NASA’s. Along with commercial and international markets, it adds up to a multibillion-dollar business opportunity.

“This stuff is to kill for,” Campbell said.

The two aerospace companies have each assembled huge teams representing the top talent in the field of exotic communications technology, according to outside experts.

Boeing has recruited Microsoft, Lucent Technologies, Hughes Electronics and Litton, among others. Meanwhile, Lockheed has Sun Microsystems, Allied-Signal Aerospace, Microsoft and Cisco Systems, as well as a cast of other small contractors long experienced in NASA communications systems.

“These are the most proficient teams you can imagine,” said Loren Thompson, an industry consultant and aerospace expert at the deTocqueville Institution in Washington. “If the government doesn’t get world-class performance out of these companies, the fault will be the government’s.”

NASA is hoping that the winner of the program--called the Consolidated Space Operations Contract--can unify the agency’s handful of various data networks into a single system and save 30% to 40% of NASA’s long-term costs.

The two companies are taking different approaches, both technically and culturally.

The Lockheed unit bidding for the contract is headed by Jay Honeycutt, former director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Boeing’s unit is headed by John McLuckey, a veteran aerospace engineer and manager who has extensive experience in tough space competitions.

From his office in Seal Beach overlooking the Pacific Ocean, McLuckey describes the NASA contract as a chance to extend Boeing penetration in the rapidly expanding operations control business.

Under government contracts, Boeing already has operational control or provides key support for the Delta launch system, the nation’s fleet of intercontinental ballistic missiles, space shuttle processing and portions of the Johnson Space Center.

Lockheed, meanwhile, believes it has the upper hand in the competition, saying its team members already operate 80% of NASA’s ground network under various separate contracts. Lockheed has moved aggressively into all kinds of government privatization contracts, running toll roads and dunning deadbeat dads.

“This is a business that we know well and expect to win,” Honeycutt said.

A winner is scheduled to be selected in July, after submissions of final bids. It will be the first duel to the death between the two firms since the mega-mergers that created them. The companies are rivals on the joint strike fighter plane, but the winner on that program will not be selected for years. And another key competition, involving a new launch vehicle for the Air Force, ended prematurely last year with both firms getting a piece of the business.

The public’s perception of NASA is as the agency of scientific discoveries and daring manned space missions, but as a bureaucracy, it is almost as slow-moving and inefficient as the Internal Revenue Service.

In requesting bids, for example, NASA issued thousands of pages of instructions, including 22 pages just to list various acronyms used elsewhere in the request. (One example: US stands for United States.) NASA asked the contractors to submit their proposals in five volumes of loose-leaf binders, with some sections copied up to 250 times. In sum, the government wanted up to 64,000 pages from each contractor.

NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin is trying to change reality at the space agency, offloading its routine work so that engineers and scientists can focus their attention on real research. So far, the agency is winning recognition for moving more aggressively than other federal offices in outsourcing its work.

NASA has privatized prelaunch space shuttle processing under a contract that is providing $1.3 billion this year to a joint venture operated by Boeing and Lockheed. The privatization of the ground data network will be smaller than that, but significant in the growth potential it offers.

The space agency has about 2,500 civil servants and an additional 5,000 private-sector workers operating its networks and ground stations, which include such far-flung outposts as Antarctica, Bermuda, Norway, Australia, the Mojave Desert, Guam, New Mexico, Florida and Maryland.

The giant antennas at these sites in most cases operate 24 hours a day, linking scientists to NASA’s constellation of spacecraft--including the deep-space probes Cassini, Ulysses, Galileo, Mars Global Surveyor, Voyager I and Voyager II. The agency has several communications satellites in high Earth orbit and 15 unmanned spacecraft in low Earth orbit. The ground network also keeps U.S. and Russian teams in contact with the Mir space station and the space shuttle when it flies.

All of these spacecraft pour data down to Earth, and NASA is generally given high credit for not accidentally losing any of the data so precious to scientists. It successfully captures 99.996% of the transmissions.

Although successful technically, the network costs a staggering $500 million a year and represents one of NASA’s largest housekeeping expenses. It does little to directly serve the agency’s primary science missions, according to Joe Rothenberg, associate administrator for space flight.

“There is no reason government should do routine things,” Rothenberg said. “We should contract for those services.”

Under private management, NASA is expecting to see sharp reductions in personnel and infrastructure. Rothenberg notes that some downsizing has already occurred, but much more needs to be done.

John Harbison, aerospace consultant for Booz Allen & Hamilton, said that the gap between the efficiency of private contractors and the government in aerospace has grown wider over the last decade.

“There has been more downsizing in corporations than in the government,” Harbison said.

For that very reason, Boeing and Lockheed are eyeing the potential for a huge business beyond NASA, including the massive ground networks operated by the Air Force, Navy and National Reconnaissance Office, the organization that operates spy satellites.

The Air Force alone has more than 90 operational satellites, controlled by the $6.2-billion Air Force Satellite Control Network at Falcon Air Force Base in Colorado. The service has tracking stations in Greenland, Britain, Guam, Hawaii, Diego Garcia, New Hampshire, California and Hawaii. Air Force officials claim they don’t know how much they spend to operate the network.

The secretive National Reconnaissance Office does not even disclose how many satellites it operates, though outside experts put the number at about three dozen. John Pike, a space expert with the Federation of American Scientists, said about a quarter of the NRO’s $6-billion budget goes for ground networks.

And the Navy also operates its own fleet of about a dozen communications satellites and a few other special-purpose spacecraft, tied to its own ground network.

It all adds up to a huge amount of duplication and cost. Nonetheless, official Air Force policy specifically opposes any privatization of these assets.

But Air Force officials are closely watching the NASA contract, and industry sources say that, if NASA successfully cuts its costs, the Air Force will have to give privatization a much closer look.

“It is a terrific business opportunity,” said Sandy Mangold, a retired Air Force colonel and military space expert. “The military satellite infrastructure is highly complex, and the drawdown of military forces means that you need long-term private-sector support.”

As in any government privatization, the people who will be affected inside are casting a nervous eye at the idea.

Included in the privatization contract will be the Deep Space Network, or DSN, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which collects data from the fleet of deep-space probes.

Michael Klein, manager of DSN’s science office in Pasadena, said that researchers depend on the DSN for radio astronomy when the network is not being used for communications. The future of the research will now depend on proposals by the private contractors.

“It is one of the most sophisticated networks, able to probe out billions of miles,” Klein said. “I am hoping we can continue using the DSN. But I really don’t know.”

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AT A GLANCE

What is at stake: A contract to manage NASA’s ground data network

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What it does: :Gathers data from satellites and deep space probes

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Annual cost: $500 million

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Employees: 2,500 civil servants and 5,000 private-sector workers

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Data capture secesss rate: 99.996%

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Bidders: Boeing and Lockheed Martin