Space Business Review - July 2014

USAF HOSTED PAYLOAD PROGRAM

On July 10, the U.S. Air Force (USAF), through its Space and Missile Systems Center, awarded an indefinite-delivery-indefinite-quantity contract to 14 space industry companies under the Hosted Payload Solutions program, created by the USAF to standardize processes and interfaces for placing U.S. military payloads on commercial satellites. Covering a potential total of up to 6 hosted payloads and $494m, the contract award establishes a pool of companies that are pre-qualified for USAF hosted payload projects, with contracts for actual projects to be awarded by the USAF as task orders in due course. The group of 14 companies is composed of a variety of satellite operators and space hardware manufacturers, ranging from the large and established, such as Intelsat General Corporation and The Boeing Company (Boeing), to the emerging and growing, such as ViviSat LLC and ExoTerra Resource, LLC. In an unrelated development, Boeing announced on July