Lockheed Martin Pursues Commercial Orion Flight Services

Three years ago, NASA unveiled plans to shift its pricy Space Launch System procurement contract into a commercial services agreement with manufacturer Boeing and partners, but the initiative, known as Deep Space Transport, failed to gain much traction.

Now the prime contractor for the agency’s Orion spacecraft—a program that has cost about $22 billion over the past 21 years—is upping the game with a proposal to sell commercial spaceflight services aboard the capsule using a variety of heavy-lift launchers.

The U.S. government now owns and operates the Orion, along with the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that debuted on the November 2022 Artemis I uncrewed flight test around the Moon. Another SLS rocket and Orion capsule are being prepared for the Artemis II crewed flight test as early as February. The Trump administration has proposed canceling both programs after Artemis III, which is expected to mark the return of astronauts to the surface of the Moon for the first time since 1972. Congress is looking to retain the SLS and Orion through at least Artemis V.

How the government would parlay taxpayers’ investment in the Orion into a privately owned and operated program is among the issues Lockheed says it is ready to tackle. Toward that end, the company unveiled a memorandum of understanding on Sept. 30 with a nonprofit science research organization interested in studying how the deep-space environment affects the human genome.

The group, BioAstra, participated in studies of identical twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly, both now retired from NASA.

“We’ve begun the early exploration of how we might execute an Orion mission, or at least use the Orion capsule for a commercial, private astronaut opportunity,” former NASA astronaut Bob Behnken, now Lockheed Martin Space’s vice president for exploration, product and technology strategy, told reporters on the sidelines of the International Astronautical Congress here.

“There’s always continuing pressure to find customers beyond the government,” he added. “This mission . . . gives us an opportunity to explore what needs to change on the pathway to commercialization.”

“We’re looking for partners in the global community,” BioAstra CEO Savi Glowe added.

In addition to launching the Orion on the SLS, Lockheed flew a demonstration Orion mission on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV, which has since been retired. Future Orion spacecraft could launch on ULA Vulcan or Blue Origin New Glenn heavy-lift rockets. “We’re going to have to explore what the right answer is for executing a commercial Orion mission,” Behnken said.

Besides the capsule being prepared for the 10-day Artemis II flight test, three new Orion pressure vessels for Artemis III-V are in production at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The crew modules are slated to be reflown for Artemis missions VI-VIII, and additional components, including crew module adapters and new launch-abort systems, are in production at the agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Tony Byers, director of strategy and business development at Lockheed Martin Space, told Aviation Week Sept. 30.

While Orion’s European Service Module (ESM) for Artemis III is at KSC, hardware for the Artemis IV, V and VI modules are in various stages of production with Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy; Airbus in Bremen, Germany; and other European Space Agency (ESA) contractors.

NASA has authorized ESMs through Artemis IX, but Byers said Lockheed has heard that the ESA Ministerial Council, which is slated to meet in November, likely will hold off funding for those missions. “They want to wait on NASA to determine the path forward,” he explained. “And if this transitions to a service, then of course we would transition to figuring out how we buy those from Airbus.”

Lockheed is not a newcomer to commercial space launch. The company co-owns ULA with Boeing and previously sold commercial versions of Atlas and Titan rockets, which it acquired from General Dynamics and later via its merger with Martin Marietta. On the spacecraft side, Lockheed acquired small-satellite manufacturer Terran Orbital, formerly Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, last year.

Since 2010, Lockheed’s space plum has been a $13.7 billion cost-plus-award-fee contract with NASA to develop, test and produce the Orion deep-space vehicle through Artemis II, as well as a hybrid cost-plus/fixed-price follow-on production and operations contract worth up to $10.5 billion. NASA also spent $5 billion on Orion under the 2005-10 Constellation program. In addition, Lockheed has invested several hundred million dollars of its own funding in the program.

“When we heard that there may be a chance that NASA was going to retire this spacecraft and compete a new service, it really didn’t make any sense,” Byers said. “It’s the only system that exists today that is designed to travel beyond low Earth orbit and safely bring crew home. There’s nothing to replace it.

“If NASA is to transition to something else, you’re talking 7-10 years before you have a replacement system that can go to those same locations,” Byers continued. “To me, there’s a unique opportunity to take what the U.S. and our allies already have invested in and convert it into something that continues for the next two or three decades.”

Having BioAstra as a potential customer for a commercial Orion flight gives Lockheed a concrete opportunity to begin discussions with NASA while studying whether other markets exist. “Can Orion be a profitable commercial enterprise when your primary customer is NASA?” Byers asked. “That’s the part we’re exploring now.”

Additional potential customers include other governments, space agencies, research organizations and companies interested in flying cargo, payloads and people. “We’re doing the market assessment of how we do the missions NASA wants to do, drive down the costs and then look at what are the other ways we could use the system,” he said.

Lockheed aims to build on NASA’s success partnering with private companies for low-Earth-orbit cargo and crew transportation services, a program the agency is looking to extend to cislunar space and the Moon’s surface.

For example, NASA is counting on SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop human landing systems (HLS) to transport crews to and from lunar orbit and the lunar surface. SpaceX’s Starship HLS is targeted for a first crewed flight in a 2027 Artemis III mission. Theoretically, crewed Starship launches from Earth to the Moon could follow.

As to why Lockheed believes it has an opportunity to provide that service with Orion, Byers said, “It exists today.” He noted SpaceX’s success with its Dragon spacecraft, which began as a cargo ship and evolved to fly crews to support the International Space Station (ISS), too. “You use what exists first, and then you have an opportunity to continue to fly missions because it’s proven and it’s reliable,” he said. “I believe that’s our advantage today.”

The Orion is not a fixed architecture, he added. Originally designed to fly crews to the ISS, the spacecraft’s current baseline mission is to dock with a planned multinational lunar-orbiting outpost, known as the Gateway, which is intended to serve as a staging platform for crewed missions to the surface of the Moon.

The Orion also could dock with a Starship, a Blue Origin HLS or a future lander built by Lockheed or another provider. “When you start getting into offering a service, depending on how far that business model goes, the trade space opens up,” Byers said.

“We’re thinking about how we can do all the things we originally planned to do with the vehicle and how can we do more,” he added. “Then we’re thinking about how we create missions that maybe NASA doesn’t have in its base plan today but that, under a commercial model, we can offer.”

One preliminary idea is to send a previously flown Orion spacecraft to Mars to demonstrate deep-space, long--duration flight. Lockheed also is weighing how to expand the vehicle’s cargo capacity, add a robotic arm and/or boost its communications capabilities with a high-gain antenna.

Technical discussions with Airbus are underway about modifications to the ESM that could, for example, allow the Orion to reach low lunar orbit and carry more consumables than current mission architectures.

“When you go to lower orbit, you generate a lot more heat, so you need a sublimator—something that can help with heat rejection,” Byers said. “The volume exists in the ESM, but a sublimator is not currently there due to NASA and ESA cost tradeoffs based on the mission architecture, so that got removed. We’ve already talked about how you add that back if you want to fly a low-lunar-orbit mission.

“We’re also looking about how you expand the tanks, how you increase the delta-v of the system to be able to do different missions,” he added. “We’re looking at different variants of the ESM.”

Early analysis indicates commercial Orion flight services will be a sustainable business, but more work is needed. If the concept proves viable, Lockheed envisions a phased approach, such as transitioning early to the fixed-price portion of its production contract with NASA. Another option is for the company to take on the agency’s prelaunch processing and integration work. For example, Lockheed currently delivers crew and service modules to NASA separately from the vehicle’s launch abort system. The agency then stacks the spacecraft.

Lockheed did that work for the Orion’s December 2014 flight test aboard a Delta IV Heavy. “We could start operating like it’s our entire stack,” Byers said. “We integrate it, we put it together, we deliver it as an integrated spacecraft, maybe beginning with Artemis III or IV, depending on what NASA is willing to do.

“We also could pick up servicing the vehicle, adding all the consumables, readying it with propellant, oxygen, nitro-gen, water for flight,” he added. “We could pick up the post-mission deservicing. Today, all of this is done by NASA. Under a service model, the government doesn’t do that. We’re looking at between Artemis III, IV and V, how we could transition those things to a service model.”

While operating on a commercial basis would change how Lockheed manages the Orion supply chain, the company does not expect the shift to present additional technical risks to the program. “It’s really the business case,” Byers said. “Who are the customers? What are the alternative revenue streams? What is the timing of the flights? How often do we believe we can fly? All that goes into the business model, and in the end, how profitable is that business model to sustain a long-term service? It’s no different than how any other commercial company would look providing a product or service.”

Whether Lockheed could cut Orion costs to the point of commercial viability remains to be seen. Byers pointed out the more than 50% reduction in costs between the Artemis II and V as a target for future savings. “When you look across the entire system, there’s probably an equivalent savings out there for all of the other elements,” he said.