Government/Military

NASA has finalized its contract with Northrop Grumman to develop the living quarters for astronauts working on the Gateway, the planned in-orbit moon outpost. NASA announced July 9 the firm, fixed-price contract is valued at $935 million.  This is a step forward for NASA’s Artemis program, which is developing the Gateway to support science investigations...

Hughes Network Systems has joined the FCC’s Emergency Broadband Benefit Program that provides financial assistance for broadband service during the COVID-19 pandemic. At this point, Hughes is the only nationwide satellite provider to participate in the program. The Emergency Broadband Benefit Program is a pandemic relief effort that kicked off in May of this year....

U.K. satellite operator Inmarsat has signed a partnership agreement with netTALK Maritime to provide a communication system for Canadian Coast Guard lighthouses based on Inmarsat’s Global Xpress (GX) high-throughput data service. This will be netTALK Maritime’s first contract in the government and military market. The company specializes in supplying similar communications solutions to cruise lines,...

NXTCOMM has won a new deal with L3Technologies, the company announced June 25. L3Harris Technologies has selected NXTCOMM to develop an Electronically Steerable Antenna (ESA) to support U.S. Department of Defense warfighters. The first deliveries of NXTCOMM’s ESAs are scheduled for early next year. NXTCOMM’s ESA works over GEO, LEO, MEO or HEO satellites in a...

Iridium has won a new $30 million contract from the United States Army, the company announced June 24. It will develop a payload to be hosted on small satellites that supports navigation systems, guidance and control for the GPS and GPS-denied precision systems. The new experimental Iridium payload is intended to be hosted by another...

A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate on Tuesday would hold Ligado Networks responsible for costs to mitigate all potential GPS interference, not just that associated with government systems, as a result of the company’s plan to build a new commercial L-band network for 5G infrastructure. Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican...

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Department of the Air Force have signed an agreement to streamline regulation for commercial space launch activity. The agreement, signed June 21, establishes a single approval process for launches at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Under the agreement, the...

Rocket Lab will design two Photon spacecraft for a NASA scientific mission to Mars, the company announced June 15.  The mission dubbed ESCAPADE — Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers — will study Mars’ hybrid magnetosphere. It is led by a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory. ESCAPADE is being developed under...

The group of G7 nations has pledged to take action on space debris as part of the G7 Leaders’ Summit in the United Kingdom.  Delegates from G7 nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States — issued a joint statement on June 13, committing to “safe and sustainable use...

Russia is preparing to supply Iran with an advanced satellite system that will give Tehran an unprecedented ability to track potential military targets across the Middle East and beyond, according to current and former U.S. and Middle Eastern officials briefed on details of the arrangement. The plan would deliver to the Iranians a Russian-made Kanopus-V...