Government/Military

Lockheed Martin has received a $5.8 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the first phase of satellite integration on the Blackjack program, the company announced Monday. The program looks to leverage commercial advances in Low-Earth Orbit to develop and demonstrate the critical elements for a global high-speed network in LEO...

NASA recently announced that its spacecraft known as OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security) has successfully rehearsed a maneuver to collect a sample from the asteroid Bennu using a Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL)-built camera detector assembly. The rehearsal brought the spacecraft through two maneuvers to a point approximately 213 feet above the surface,...

Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing subsidiary, designed, manufactured, assembled, and integrated the U.S. Space Force TETRA-1 satellite in 15 months, which the company said is 60% faster than previous missions. TETRA-1 is a microsatellite created for various prototype missions in and around Geostationary Orbit (GEO). It was the first prototype award under the U.S. Space...

The U.S. Army has awarded L3Harris Technologies a $27 million contract for sustainment and support of satellite communication terminals, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) announced April 21.  The contract L3Harris received is worth $27,363,117, and is a cost-no-fee, cost-plus-fixed fee contract to provide sustainment and support for the fielded modernization of enterprise terminals and...

  The FCC on Thursday voted to update its satellite rules on orbital debris, specifically clarifying disclosures that satellite companies must make regarding debris mitigation. The Report and Order approved has not been released yet. The changes include requiring that satellite applicants assign numerical values to collision risk, probability of successful post-mission disposal, and casualty...

The top officials of the U.S. Air Force and Space Force are looking at “different mitigation steps” to counter potential effects on GPS receivers that could emerge from the FCC’s decision to approve a new commercial L-Band network for 5G infrastructure. Two days after the FCC approved Ligado’s application to build a new low-power terrestrial network for...

Engility Services, LLC., a subsidiary of Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) was awarded a $655 million contract to modernize satellite ground systems for the U.S. Space Force (USSF).  The contract is for the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) Innovation and Prototyping Directorate through the Engineering, Development, Integration, and Sustainment (EDIS) contract....

The Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) has recently delivered an engineering test unit of the Short-Wave Infrared Detection Assembly, to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. This is a major subcomponent on NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem spacecraft (PACE).  PACE, which is scheduled to launch in late 2022, is designed to extend and improve NASA’s satellite...

The FCC unanimously approved Ligado’s application to deploy a low-power terrestrial nationwide network in the L-band to support 5G and Internet of Things services (IoT). The Commission’s announcement came on Monday after Chairman Ajit Pai circulated a draft order last week to approve Ligado’s proposal.  Various stakeholders including the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), the...

Orbital Insight has been tentatively awarded a contract with the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to help detect anomalies around the world using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and geospatial data.  The contract, which an Orbital Insight representative said on April 17 is still under final negotiations, is with USAF’s AFVentures Strategic Financing (STRATFI). The program is a...