Government/Military

KBR received a $300 million recompete contract to provide scientific, engineering and technical services for the U.S. Geological Survey‘s (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, the company revealed Monday. This is a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract, with a term of five years. Under the contract, KBR will analyze and assess changes to the Earth’s landscape....

Virgin Galactic and Masten Space Systems won contracts with NASA to provide flight and integration services for payloads chosen by the Flight Opportunities program, the agency revealed Monday. The two companies join four other companies — UP Aerospace, Blue Origin, Raven Aerostar, and World View — to provide service under commercial Indefinite-Delivery/Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contracts. The...

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will step down from his position leading the commission when President-elect Joe Biden takes office, Pai announced in a statement Monday. Pai will step down on Inauguration Day — Jan. 20, 2021. Pai was appointed to a Republican position on the FCC by former President Barack Obama in 2012, and President...

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) contributed funding to MDA Space under the smartEarth initiative to develop next-generation Earth Observation (EO) technologies, the company revealed Monday. The monetary value of the contribution was not disclosed. The smartEarth initiative has funded the Deep Learning for Classification of SAR-Derived Forest Change project, which aims to develop new Artificial...

SES Government Solutions was awarded an Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) tests contract from the U.S. Air Force, the company revealed Monday. The contract is part of an effort to unify systems across all domains — air, land, sea, space, cyber, electromagnetic spectrum — in an open architecture with multiple integrated platforms, in order to...

After revising selection criteria six months ago, the Department of the Air Force named six possible headquarters locations for U.S. Space Command on Nov. 19 — Kirtland AFB, New Mexico; Offutt AFB, Nebraska; Patrick AFB, Florida; Peterson AFB, Colorado; Port San Antonio, Texas, and Redstone Army Airfield, Alabama. Four of those selections — Kirtland, Offutt,...

The European Space Agency (ESA) selected Italian ground network provider Leaf Space for a novel telemedicine-via-satellite project called “CARES,” Leaf Space revealed Friday. The project collects COVID-19 patient medical data while they quarantine at home, which is then fed into a health platform. The tele-diagnostic health platform was developed by Leaf Space’s project partner H&S,...

The FCC on Wednesday voted to establish a unified licensing framework for Earth stations and space stations that the commission said will increase flexibility for satellite operators.   The new, optional licensing framework is available to systems operating above 10 GHz and allows blanket-licensed space stations and blanket-licensed earth stations in a satellite system — both...

Boeing’s bid to build a spacecraft capable of flying NASA astronauts to the moon didn’t meet NASA’s requirements, and the company was going to lose out on a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But NASA was worried that the corporate giant would protest the contract award, potentially holding it up for months at...

Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) revealed Tuesday that its U.K. subsidiary was awarded a contract by the European Space Agency (ESA) for the Global Newspace Network Evolution (GNNetE) initiative. SSC will develop a next generation concept for space to ground communications, specifically for the cubesat and smallsat markets. The GNNetEt initiative is supported by the U.K....