Government/Military

Telesat hired a retired Canadian brigadier general to lead its ​​government go-to-market and business development strategy for the Lightspeed Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) network. The Canadian operator announced retired Brig. Gen. G. Michael Adamson as the company’s new senior director of Defense Strategy and Business Development on Wednesday.  Adamson was the inaugural Commander of the Canadian...

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—The Space Development Agency (SDA) continues to advance the communications capabilities of its first batch of satellites on orbit as part of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), demonstrating sustained linkage between two satellites for more than a day at a time, the agency’s top official said on Monday. Two weeks ago, the...

PARIS — Acquiring resilient satellite communications lies at the heart of the U.S. Space Force’s commercial space strategy, but according to Brig. Gen. Jacob Middleton, Commander of U.S. Space Forces in Europe and Africa, the five-year-old branch of the Pentagon is still looking for a better way to secure connectivity. “Unfortunately, there’s no such thing...

PARIS — In an address at the World Space Business Week (WSBW) event in Paris, European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher told attendees that the ESA Directorate for Commercialization he launched in 2021 has now signed 47 individual agreements with venture capitalists worth 460 million euros ($511.8 million). According to Aschbacher, who established the...

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) selected 10 companies to compete for task orders under a potential five-year, $290 million contract seeking commercial data and analytic services that monitor and assess global economic, environmental, and military activity. NGA announced the award on Sept. 13. Airbus Group’s Airbus U.S. Space & Defense business, Booz Allen Hamilton, BlackSky Technologies, BlueHalo, CACI, Electromagnetic Systems, Maxar...

Xenesis has won a new Phase 2 contract from the Space Development Agency (SDA) for optical communications terminals. This effort kicked off in December 2023 and is a follow-on effort from an initial Phase 1 award in August 2022 for Xenesis’ Adaptable Optical Satellite Terminal Concepts. Xenesis announced the deal on Sept. 11. It is...

NATO awarded satellite operator SES its first contract for Medium-Earth Orbit (MEO) satellite services under a partnership established in 2022.  The NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA), announced the MEO Global Services (MGS) award on Sept. 10. Luxembourg and the U.S. will leverage SES’s MEO services to carry out naval, air, and ground communications missions...

Iceye will see its persistent monitoring, and natural catastrophe solutions used in Greece thanks to a new contract win. It has signed a contract for the Greek National Satellite Space Project Axis 1.2 (radar program) for the Greek Space Agency and Greek Ministry of Digital Governance, together with the European Space Agency (ESA). The contract...

NASA has selected eight companies to provide commercial satellite data to support the agency’s Earth science research. NASA announced the Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition Program On-Ramp1 Multiple Award contract on Sept. 6 with a maximum cumulative value of $476 million.  BlackSky, Iceye US, MDA, Pixxel, Planet, Satellogic, Teledyne Brown Engineering, and Tomorrow.io were selected. Under...

Amid popular, and some military, concern about the timely accuracy and applicability of artificial intelligence (AI), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is launching a pilot program for accrediting geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) models for the National System for Geospatial (NSG) intelligence. The agency’s Accreditation of GEOINT AI Models (AGAIM) “is the evaluation of the methodology and...