Government/Military

Airbus has won the new satellite communications framework contract for military and civil missions of the European Union and its member states. Airbus announced Tuesday that the European Defence Agency (EDA) awarded the four-year framework contract, which is estimated to be worth tens of millions of euros. The EU SatCom Market contract will allow EU...

FCC Press Secretary Tina Pelkey is moving on to a position at Blue Origin. O’Dwyer’s public relations blog reported Monday that Pelkey will be senior manager of  government affairs communication. She will be based in Blue Origin’s East Coast business office in Arlington, Virginia.  The FCC’s new deputy director of communications, Anne Veigle, comes from...

The Pentagon has for weeks now vocally articulated its case for the FCC to rescind a recent approval for Ligado to repurpose spectrum adjacent to that used for GPS, and urged lawmakers to support the department’s side during a highly technical May 6 hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. But while many SASC committee members side...

Although hard to believe, it has been about two months since industry executives gathered for SATELLITE 2020. I wanted to take an opportunity to remember the breadth of discussions and topics covered when last our industry gathered in person. The creation of the U.S. Space Force signifies a new era for satellite communications with more...

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. has been awarded a contract for satellite bandwidth utilization services for the U.S. Space Force (USSF). Kratos plans to provide continuous monitoring services of commercial satellites leased by the USSF. The base year of the sole-source contract is valued at about $3 million, and if all four option years...

Gwynne Shotwell’s heart is in her throat. With one gesture, SpaceX’s President and COO Gwynne Shotwell gave a glimpse into her perspective ahead of the historic NASA and SpaceX Demo-2 test mission coming up on May 27, in which a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket and travel to the...

L3Harris has received $95 million from the U.S. Army to continue delivering AN/PRC-158 two-channel, software-defined manpack radios, which will be utilized in the service’s Integrated Tactical Network evaluation in late summer, the company announced April 29. The latest deal is the company’s third low-rate initial production order for manpack radios under the $12.7 billion multi-award...

NASA has announced that Blue Origin, Dynetics, and SpaceX will design and develop human landing systems for the Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the surface of moon by 2024.  Blue Origin is developing the Integrated Lander Vehicle (ILV) – a three-stage lander which will be launched on its New Glenn Rocket System...

SEAKR Engineering, Inc. has been awarded as the prime contractor for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Pit Boss contract to further expand its contractual work supporting the Blackjack program. The award for Phase I Option II is part of a three-phase effort seeking on-orbit demonstration of full processing capability in a multi-satellite constellation. SEAKR...

  Viasat Inc. has shipped more than 200 production units of its advanced Move Out / Jump Off (MOJO) Link 16 expeditionary tactical gateway system to U.S. and international military forces. The company said in a Monday release that this 200th milestone shipment marks a threefold increase Year-Over-Year (YOY) in production capacity of the MOJO...