The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has started soliciting information from potential industry sources that could provide a user interface for the Traffic Coordination System for Space. Responses are due Oct. 31, according to a request for information posted Monday on SAM.gov.
Industry representatives meeting with Commerce Deputy Secretary Don Graves on Tuesday "stressed the need for [Commerce] to work quickly to field the new capabilities ideally by buying and redistributing existing commercial products in order to maintain leadership in the face of competing SSA offerings from the EU and China," a Commerce official told Breaking Defense today.
That pilot project will use SPACECOM's Unified Data Library (UDL) as a data base, DalBello said, because Commerce is still in the early stages of creating its own cloud-based data storage capability, called the Open Architecture Data Repository (OADR).
Former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told Breaking Defense that Phase Four has the potential to "disrupt the in-space propulsion market," and its technology "is important for the country."
The Office of Space Commerce, in part, is trying to define the scope of what "basic" services it will provide for free, and what else it might do for a fee.