Photo: Telesat.

Telesat’s U.S. subsidiary has joined the Lockheed Martin team for the Tranche 0 contract of the Space Transport Layer. Lockheed Martin received a $187.5 million contract in September to build 10 satellites for an initial space-based sensor and tactical communications constellation – Tranche O. The architecture will be an optically-connected internet in space to provide low latency communications and targeting information to military forces in the field.

According to Telesat U.S. Services Tuesday announcement, the subsidiary will work to demonstrate interoperability between optical inter-satellite links (OISLs) of the SDA’s Transport Layer satellites and those of Telesat’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation. Telesat LEO OISLs will be compatible with SDA’s OISL standard. Telesat plans to conduct hardware and software testing on their LEO emulator at Telesat’s U.S. Government facility.

“Lockheed Martin took a visionary approach to their SDA Transport Layer team, incorporating commercial space solutions to provide the U.S. government greater communications system resiliency and flexibility. We’re proud to bring Telesat’s system engineering expertise to the team,” said Don Brown, general manager of Government Services at Telesat. “With the Telesat LEO advanced space architecture, governments worldwide can leverage commercial innovations. This approach, underpinned by Telesat’s OISL expertise, will enable space network performance on par with terrestrial networks, helping Lockheed Martin and the SDA demonstrate how interoperability with the commercial space networks can effectively drive better results for government connectivity.”

Lockheed Martin’s Tranche O satellites are targeted to launch in two years.