Contracts awarded for UK ground mission control system

An artistic rendition of the UK's proposed future ISR constellation. (Space Command)

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has awarded contracts to six separate suppliers as part of Project Beroe, which seeks a ground segment software solution for controlling space-based assets.

A total of GBP300,000 (USD360,663) was awarded to UK subsidiaries CGI, Lockheed Martin, Telespazio, and Terma as well as Raytheon Systems and Rheatech, the MoD announced on 2 February.

Project Beroe is intended to be a ground segment mission control system (MCS) that will enable the US Space Command to control, monitor, and in-orbit task the UK's future space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) constellation. It is expected to be an important component of the UK MoD ground segment, which will act as the primary MCS for the ‘Customer Satellite Operations Centre', the MoD said.

The 36-month project is worth GBP20 million in total and seeks a provider to create a technology road map, and assist with the maturation of system requirements and the development of a software architecture, through demonstration and prototyping.

The programme is adopting a Rapid Agile Prototyping, Scaled for Operations (RAPSO) commercial framework, which segregates the project into four stages/lots.

An MoD spokesperson informed Janes that “Lot 1 will be progressed through a number of development spirals, at present the project is in spiral one. Prior to spiral two commencement, the MoD intends to further downselect to a reduced number of suppliers and continue development with them towards a [minimum viable product] MVP”.

Each contractor that successfully demonstrated their proposed solution and which met the technical requirements was awarded GBP50,000 under Lot 1 spiral 1.