Epilogue
NASA Space Tracking Network
In January 2011 it was announced that the Space Communications Network Services (SCNS) contract for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center space and near-Earth networks was awarded to a competitor after three years of protests by Honeywell (HTSI), ending over 50 years of BFEC/ATSC/HTSI support to NASA's space tracking networks. HTSI was initially the lowest bidder.
These networks provide most of the communications and tracking services for a wide range of Earth-orbiting spacecraft, including the International Space Station, the space shuttle, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Earth Observing System satellites.
The SCNS contract was first awarded to the competitor in October 2008 and again in April 2009 and July 2010, but commencement of the contract work was delayed due to a number of protests filed by HTSI.
The competitors team includes several partners, some of who were former partners of HTSI.
Bendix Field Engineering Corp first entered the Space Program in 1957 with the MINITRACK system and soon after with Project Mercury and then on to the Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab missions with the Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN), the Satellite Tracking and Data Acquisition Network (STADAN) which supported many of the unmanned scientific satellite programs, and the Deep Space Network (DSN) followed by the Space Shuttle program and the Tracking Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) started in the early 80's, both of which became operational by the latter 1980's.
All that remain are a few small operations scattered through the network with the bulk gone to the competitor(s).
Each and every one of us carried the load
So much for the past, it's over and done
It was quite an experience and loads of fun
The friends we made and places we seen
Would fill a book and maybe a screen"
An excerpt from the poem 'Once Upon a Company'
-- Author unknown
Gary Schulz
BFEC/ATSC/HTSI
1966-1996
webtek@bfec.us
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