Government/Military

Accion Systems and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) have reached a partnership to  research and develop electrospray technology. The goal is to create high-efficiency systems capable of delivering significant total impulse for future small satellites. The Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), announced Monday, was finalized in May 2020. This partnership will continue...

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded Northrop Grumman Systems  a $7,304,322 firm-fixed-price and cost-reimbursement modification to its contract for Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) sensor sustainment. The DMSP has been collecting weather data for U.S. military operations for more than five decades and provides secure global weather and space weather data to support DOD....

The Mission-Critical Technologies group of Comtech Telecommunications has been awarded $1.6 million in additional funding to its sustainment contract to provide ongoing sustainment services for the AN/TSC-198A SNAP (Secret Internet Protocol Router (SIPR) and Non-Classified Internet Protocol Router (NIPR) Access Point), and baseband equipment. This additional funding, announced on Monday, came during the third quarter...

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday said that it is requiring Communications and Power Industries LLC (CPI) to divest its ASC Signal Division for the company to proceed with its planned acquisition of the satellite communications technologies business of General Dynamics. CPI’s deal for General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies was announced last August and was expected to close...

Comtech Telecommunications and its subsidiaries won two contracts to provide U.S. government and military satellite service, the company announced May 28. Comtech’s Mission-Critical Technologies group  was awarded a $12.5 million order from U.S.-based integrator Strategic Communications to provide Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) satellite terminals to support secure communications for an unnamed U.S. government end-user....

Satellite operator Viasat reported record-breaking revenue increases and subscriber growth, and dropped a surprise revelation that it was scrapping its planned Medium-Earth Orbit (MEO) constellation for a new Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation that will launch in approximately five to six years — all during its Fourth Quarter (Q4) 2020 and full-year results call on May...

OneWeb has told the FCC that it wants to increase the number of satellites in its constellation to 48,000, the Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite operator announced May 27. OneWeb, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March, said the new modification request will update its existing U.S. authorization to match the FCC’s latest system...

SES and Intelsat both elected on Tuesday to clear a portion of the C-band spectrum in the United States in line with the FCC’s accelerated timeline in order to receive accelerated relocation payments. These filings come in advance of the FCC’s May 29 deadline. The FCC voted on Feb. 28 to repurpose the C-band spectrum...

The U.S. Space Force has completed the preliminary design reviews for two potential mission payloads for the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next-Gen OPIR) satellites that will become the U.S. military’s next missile warning systems, the service announced May 22. The Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) at Los Angeles Air Force Base, California, is developing...

The U.S. Navy selected Viasat and Data Link Solutions (DLS) to participate in a five-year contract worth a potential $999 million contract for each company to produce, retrofit and sustain Multi-functional Information Distribution System (MIDS) Joint Tactical Radio Systems (JTRS) terminals. MIDS JTRS terminals are line-of-sight, four-channel radio systems designed for secure broadband data and...