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Any decision on whether or not to restart rocket development will be driven by market opportunities.
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – A year after halting development of its OmegA rocket, Northrop Grumman is not completely ruling out a future attempt to re-enter the national security launches market, company executives said on Aug. 11.
“We continue to negotiate different opportunities and different options to invest in future capabilities, and of course, it’s very market driven,” said Kevin Richardson, director of launchers business development at Northrop Grumman, in a statement. meeting with journalists.
Prior to its acquisition by Northrop Grumman, Orbital ATK in 2016 unveiled plans to develop a heavy, solid-fuel launcher for US national security satellite launches, and in 2018 secured nearly $ 800 million in funding from the Air Strength to support the project.
The vehicle, named OmegA, consisted of solid rocket stages with a cryogenic upper stage supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne. Northrop Grumman in 2020 lost to United Launch Alliance and SpaceX in Phase 2 of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program.
Richardson said national security remains the company’s core business, but the decision whether or not to restart rocket development will be driven entirely by market opportunities. “This is something that we are actively negotiating, not only on the national security space side of launchers, but also all the different classes of payloads as well as the different orbital layers and orbital insertion points,” he said. he declared.
The next opportunity to compete for an NSSL contract would arise in 2023, when the Space Force plans to solicit bids for its Phase 3 launch supply. The Space Force launch company has scheduled an industry day at Los Angeles later this month for the first discussions on Phase 3 of NSSL.
Jo Cangianelli, director of launch and missile defense at Northrop Grumman, said company executives would attend the industry day and be interested in the Space Force’s plans to select future service providers from launch.
“We’ll see what their intentions are,” Cangianelli said. Northrop Grumman will investigate whether the Space Force is considering “only extensions of the current contracts it has today, or whether or not it is considering something beyond”.
“This is the trade we’re going to do in terms of the level of investment required to move forward in this area,” Cangianelli said.
Industry analysts were not surprised that Northrop Grumman ended the OmegA program after losing Phase 2 of NSSL given the cost of maintaining a clientless launcher looming on the horizon. Jim McAleese, of McAleese & Associates, noted that most of Northrop Grumman’s profits in its space business come from intercontinental ballistic missiles, missile defense interceptors and solid rocket boosters.
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