Government/Military

Boeing awarded a contract to Hughes Network Systems to develop mission management, system control, networking and ground hub capabilities supporting anti-jam satellite communications capability for the Air Force’s Protected Tactical Enterprise Service (PTES) program. Work on the contract was initiated in late 2018 and is expected to run through 2025. The PTES program aims to...

Northrop Grumman is moving ahead on schedule to field its new OmegA rocket by 2021 in hopes that the U.S. Air Force will select it as one replacement to the Russian-made RD-180, with the first stage test firing scheduled for May 31, one official said April 8. “Our RD-180 replacement is going to be fired...

Kratos Defense and Security Solutions will serve as the founding member of the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Space ISAC), which was unveiled during a classified session at the 35th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. As a service to the industry and with the support of the U. S. Government, Kratos has provided...

Maxar Technologies has completed a Critical Design Review (CDR) for the on-orbit servicing spacecraft bus it is building for NASA’s Restore-L project, and is on track to ship the bus to NASA in 2020 for integration with its payload in time for its scheduled launch in 2022. The CDR took place over a five-day period at Maxar’s Silicon...

Harris Corp. [HRS] has received $84 million to produce an experimental satellite dubbed Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3) that will demonstrate new position, navigation and timing capabilities that could improve the resiliency of the GPS constellation, the company said April 8. The contract was awarded in December 2018 by the Air Force Space and Missile Systems...

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will not hold priority access license auctions for Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) mid-band spectrum until at least next year “at the earliest,” FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly said yesterday while speaking at the University of Maryland. However, the FCC plans to make 3.5 gigahertz (GHz) spectrum available to unlicensed third tier,...

A Rocket Lab Electron launch vehicle successfully lifted off from Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula at 23:27 UTC on March 28. The mission launched a prototype reflect array antenna to orbit for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA’s R3D2 mission was launched just over 18 months from conception — a reduction...

The Government of Canada exercised the option for another year on their contract through ORBCOMM’s Canadian partner Maerospace, a global supplier of Automatic Identification System (AIS) data and maritime domain awareness solutions. ORBCOMM is a global provider of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. Through its Canadian subsidiary SkyWave, ORBCOMM will provide satellite Automatic...

The C-Band Alliance (CBA) appointed Peter Pitsch as head of advocacy and government affairs. The CBA is the entity that proposes to implement a safe and efficient clearing and repurposing of mid-band ‘C-band’ downlink spectrum to accelerate the deployment of 5G services in the U.S. The CBA was formed by Intelsat, SES, Eutelsat, and Telesat,...