Halt! Who GOES-R?

All ready to go and then — no go. Lockheed Martin was told by NASA to stop work on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-R) satellite, due to a protest filed by Boeing with the U.S. Government Accountability Office over the December 2, $1.09 billion satellite award. The GAO is the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress and has the authority to review government acquisition actions and recommend corrective actions, including termination of improper awards. Another company that lost out in the bidding was Northrop Grumman. No comment from them whether they are contesting the choice of Lockheed Martin.

NASA, in coordination with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) December 2, selected Lockheed Martin Space Systems to build two satellites for NOAA's GOES-R program. The first launch of the GOES-R series is scheduled for 2015. Data from the NOAA satellites will be used for weather forecasting and environmental, space and solar science.

A Boeing official said the company learned "very little" from a December 10 contract debriefing from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on why Lockheed Martin was chosen over Boeing. Based on what it did hear, Boeing concluded, "We offered a superior proposal under the disclosed evaluation criteria." GAO has 100 days to respond to the company's protest.

Boeing built the current generation of GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) weather satellites on its older 601 platform, and offered a modularized version of its current commercial bus, called the 702B, for the new series. The cost estimates of the next generation constellation of three to eight GOES-R spacecraft increased from an originally budgeted $6.2 billion to $11.4 billion, resulting in the space agency to pare back its plans launching two spacecraft, with options for a third and fourth. The current lifecycle baseline cost is $7.7 billion.

GOES-R will provide about 50 times more weather and climate data than the current series, and is noticed by solar- and space-viewing instruments in addition to the traditional Earth views. However, mounting costs prompted NASA to cancel the Hypersonic Environmental Suite, intended to provide detailed atmospheric measurements of temperature, humidity and pressure. The agency still hopes to fly an equivalent instrument at some point in the future.