Lockheed Martin has been notified by NASA to stop work on GOES-R, because Boeing has filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office over the Dec. 2 $1.09 billion satellite award.

A Boeing official said the company learned "very little" from a Dec. 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.

The other losing bidder for the GOES-R space segment contract was Northrop Grumman, which is not commenting on whether it is protesting as well. Contractors have only five days to file a protest following the debrief.

Boeing built the current generation of GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) weather satellites on its older 601 platform. It proposed a modularized version of its current commercial bus called the 702B for the new series. Cost estimates of the next generation constellation of three to eight GOES-R spacecraft ballooned from an originally budgeted $6.2 billion to $11.4 billion, prompting the space agency to scale back its plans and launch just two spacecraft, with options for a third and fourth. The current lifecycle baseline cost is $7.7 billion (Aerospace DAILY, Dec. 3).

GOES-R will provide about 50 times more weather and climate data than the current series. It is distinguished 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.