WEBVTT FILE

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I am Badri Younes; I'm the Deputy
Associate Administrator for Space

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Communication Navigation. Before TDRS
we communicated with our missions in

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space through direct transmission to the
ground. We needed ground station at different

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parts of the world to have as much
contact with the mission as possible but

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you know, two thirds of the Earth is water. So much of the ground stations that we have were

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on the ground and sometimes we relied on ships in the ocean to provide some

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coverage. Altogether we couldn't support
more than 50% of the time to

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provide daily support to any, any, any
mission. That's when the concept for a

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different way of doing business, it came
about in the mid 70s. It was a revolution.

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It increased our support from 15% to
more than 85%. From way up in space you

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can have full visibility of, you can see,
from one single point in space, from a

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geosynchronous orbit almost half of the
Earth. Missions that are flying

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beneath that geosynchronous orbit, now
they relay data to that data relay

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satellite and then transmitted to a
point on the ground.

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So, with two data relay satellites you are
providing coverage, you know, like

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full-time, global coverage to all
missions close to, if not more than, 85%

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of the time. The mission needs
are growing. We are sending humans to

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deep space. We are seeing the
requirements and the communication needs

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growing exponentially as opposed to
today and NASA has decided to establish

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a permanent presence in the solar system and
as you send the humans into deep

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space on a journey that may take up to
three years even more than that, you need

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to still provide them the kind of
quality of life that they learned or

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they have been accustomed to on the
space station or on the ground. So you'll

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need to expand the bandwidth available
to them.  I have made a commitment that

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communication will not be a showstopper
and enabling future space exploration.

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The whole thing is has been a team
effort. I'm grateful to what Goddard has

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done, to the TDRS team, to all our folks down at the launch

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services down at the at the Cape, and as
well as the ULA. Boeing has done a

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wonderful job and readying in a very
capable spacecraft and this is going to

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help us in meeting the requirement in
the 2020s and the early 2030s.  It's

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helpful that NASA allows you to be
creative, innovative, bring crazy

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ideas, you know,
out-of-the-box ideas. We are all

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driven by that curiosity, by that
wandering spirit trying to discover and,

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you know, the unknown that's what NASA is
all about. The place for dreamers and for

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those who believe that they can make the
dream come true.

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beep, beep, beep, beep