Commercial Orbital Transportation Services
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services was a NASA program to coordinate the delivery of crew and cargo to the International Space Station by private companies. The program was announced on January 18, 2006 and successfully flew all cargo demonstration flights by September 2013. NASA has suggested that "Commercial services to ISS will be necessary through at least 2015."
COTS is related but separate from the Commercial Resupply Services program. COTS relates to the development of the vehicles, CRS to the actual deliveries. COTS involves a number of Space Act Agreements, with NASA providing milestone-based payments. COTS does not involve binding contracts. CRS on the other hand does involve legally binding contracts, which means the suppliers would be liable if they failed to perform. Commercial Crew Development is a related program, aimed specifically at developing crew rotation services. It is similar to COTS-D. All three programs are managed by NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office.
NASA signed agreements with SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler in 2006, but later terminated the agreement with RpK due to insufficient private funding. NASA then signed an agreement with Orbital Sciences in 2008. Independently, NASA awarded contracts for cargo delivery to the International Space Station in December 2008, to Orbital Sciences and SpaceX to utilize their COTS cargo vehicles.
NASA's Final Report on the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program considers it an unqualified success and a model for future public-private collaboration. Compared to traditional costs-plus contracts employed by NASA, such as the $12 billion Orion contract, the unprecedented efficiency of the $800 million COTS investment resulted in "two new U.S. medium-class launch vehicles and two automated cargo spacecraft".
Purpose
Unlike any previous NASA project, the proposed spacecraft are intended to be owned and financed primarily by the companies themselves and will be designed to serve both U.S. government agencies and commercial customers. NASA will contract for missions as its needs become clear.This is more challenging than existent commercial space transportation because it requires precision orbit insertion, rendezvous and possibly docking with another spacecraft. The private spaceflight vendors are competing for four specific service areas:
- Capability level A: External unpressurized cargo delivery and disposal
- Capability level B: Internal pressurized cargo delivery and disposal
- Capability level C: Internal pressurized cargo delivery, return and recovery
- Capability level D: Crew Transportation
Program rationale
After years of keeping orbital transport for human spaceflight in-house, NASA concluded that firms in a free market could develop and operate such a system more efficiently and affordably than a government bureaucracy. The then NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin stated that without affordable Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, the agency will not have enough funds remaining to achieve the objectives of the Vision for Space Exploration. In November 2005, Dr. Griffin articulated that:
Furthermore, if such services were unavailable by the end of 2010, NASA would've been forced to purchase orbital transportation services on foreign spacecraft such as the Russian Federal Space Agency's Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle, or the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's H-II Transfer Vehicle since NASA's own Crew Exploration Vehicle, since refocused, would not have been ready until 2014. NASA asserted that once COTS was operational, it would no longer procure Russian cargo delivery services. On May 22, 2012, Bill Gerstenmaier confirmed that NASA was no longer purchasing any cargo resupply services from Russia and would rely solely on the American CRS vehicles, the SpaceX Dragon and Orbital Sciences' Cygnus; with the exception of a few vehicle-specific payloads delivered on the European ATV and the Japanese HTV.
NASA anticipates that COTS services to ISS will be necessary through at least 2015. NASA projects at most a half-dozen COTS flights a year that would transport 10 tonnes annually. The NASA Administrator has suggested that space transportation services procurement may be expanded to orbital fuel depots and lunar surface deliveries should the first phase of COTS prove successful.
History
First round
In May 2006, NASA selected six semifinalist proposals for further evaluation: SpaceX, Andrews Space, Transformational Space Corp., Rocketplane Kistler, Spacehab, and SpaceDev.On August 18, 2006, NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate announced that SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler won Phase I of the COTS program. NASA planned to engage winners in funded Space Act agreements through 2010.
On November 8, 2006 RpK and ATK announced that ATK would become the lead contractor for the K-1.
NASA terminated the COTS agreement with RpK in September 2007 after NASA warned RpK that it had failed to raise sufficient private funding by the July 31, 2007 deadline, freeing up $175 million from the COTS budget to be awarded to another company or companies.
Boeing submitted a proposal in conjunction with Arianespace to launch the ESA ATV module on a Delta IV rocket. Whereas the ESA launches the ATV on an Ariane 5, the two companies worked together to make this proposal. The ATV can carry up to 7.6 metric tons with a suitable launcher.
Second round
By June 18, 2007, NASA had signed separate non-reimbursable Space Act Agreements with three additional firms, Constellation Services International, These agreements included no financial support, however NASA agreed to share information to help the companies to develop their proposed vehicles.On October 22, 2007, NASA solicited proposals for the $175 million in unawarded first round funds. Some of the new contenders who entered before the deadline in November 2007 for the funding were Spacehab, t/Space, Andrews Space, PlanetSpace and SpaceDev.
In January 2008 industry sources claimed that the field had been downselected to four; Spacehab, Andrews Space, PlanetSpace and Orbital Sciences, with the announcement date set to February 7. Several sources later suggested that Boeing and not Andrews was a final contestant.
On February 19, 2008, the second round selection was made to Orbital Sciences Corporation, for the Cygnus spacecraft. NASA's selection statement showed that Orbital beat Boeing on expected lower costs and the added benefit of a new medium lift launcher Taurus II with Andrews, PlanetSpace and Spacehab being eliminated on funding concerns.
Following the original $500M Space Act Agreement, an additional $288M in "augmentation" funding was awarded to the two contractors before the demonstration flights.
Program conclusion
The COTS program was successfully concluded in November 2013 after two companies, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, designed, built and launched "a pair of new spacecraft on rockets that also were newly designed". NASA has published its own history of the COTS program including the controlling of the development program using Space Act Agreements, with lessons for future programs.Awards
- Rocketplane Kistler — originally awarded contract worth $207 million; Rocketplane Kistler received only $32.1 million before NASA terminated their contract for failure to complete milestones in October 2007.
- SpaceX — awarded contract worth $278 million; in 2011 additional milestones were added bringing the total contract value to $396 million.
- Orbital Sciences Corporation — awarded contract worth $170 million in the second round in February 2008; in 2011 additional milestones were added bringing the total contract value to $288 million. The Antares made its maiden flight lifting a payload mass simulator to low Earth orbit on April 21, 2013. On September 18, 2013, Antares successfully launched a Cygnus spacecraft to rendezvous with the International Space Station.
Competitors
Company | Spacecraft | Launch vehicle | Partner | First round participant | First round semi-finalist | Second round participant | Won round |
Orbital Sciences/Orbital ATK | Cygnus | Antares | |||||
SpaceX | Dragon | Falcon 9 | |||||
Andrews Space | Andrews Cargo Module | Hercules | Alliant Techsystems, MDA | ||||
Boeing | Automated Transfer Vehicle | Delta IV | Arianespace, EADS Astrium | ||||
PlanetSpace | Orbital Transfer Vehicle | Athena III | Alliant Techsystems, Lockheed Martin | ||||
SpaceHab | ARCTUS | Atlas V | Lockheed Martin | ||||
Rocketplane Kistler | K-1 | K-1 | Orbital Sciences | ||||
Venturer Aerospace | S-550 | Falcon 9 | SpaceX | ||||
SpaceDev | Dream Chaser | Atlas V | Lockheed Martin | ||||
t/Space | Crew Transfer Vehicle | QuickReach | AirLaunch | ||||
Constellation Services International | Progress | Soyuz | RKK Energia | ||||
Lockheed Martin | ATV, H-II Transfer Vehicle | Atlas V | EADS Astrium, JAXA | ||||
PanAero | Space Van | Space Van | |||||
Space Systems/Loral | Space Tug | Aquarius Launch Vehicle | Constellation Services International | ||||
Advent Launch Services | |||||||
Exploration Partners | |||||||
Odyssey Space Research | |||||||
Thortek Laboratories | |||||||
Triton Systems |