Agency Seeks Hypersonic Missile Defense System Proposals
Date: June 8, 2020 | Outlet: Space Daily | By: Ed Adamczyk The U.S. Space Development Agency announced a search for contractors to develop technology to detect and track 3,100-mph hypersonic missiles. The request for proposals, issued last week, calls for “commercial services to launch and support its Tracking Phenomenology Experiment [TPE],”and represents the first…
DoD To Test Laser Communications Terminals in Low Earth Orbit
Date: June 8, 2020 | Outlet: Space News | By: Sandra Erwin The Space Development Agency says optical inter-satellite links are “one of the most critical technologies to be demonstrated.” WASHINGTON — Optical communications terminals that use lasers to beam data across space will be tested in upcoming experiments by the Space Development Agency and…
COVID, OneWeb and how the Space Development Agency has coped
DATE: May 26, 2020 | Outlet: C4ISRNet | By: Nathan Strout In March 2019, the Department of Defense established the Space Development Agency to oversee the creation of a new national security space architecture, one that would forego the traditional U.S. Air Force approach of using a small number of large satellites in higher orbits…
General Hyten Ignites Space Force’s Afterburner With His Newest Initiative
Date: May 18, 2020 | Outlet: Forbes | By: Charles Beames Years before COVID-19 stole national headlines, General Hyten infamously described the satellites he was outfitted with as “big juicy targets,” setting off alarm bells that for many are still ringing. A series of changes have since followed, most notably the creation of the…
Esper Orders SDA To Link C2 Networks For All-Domain Ops
Date: May 6, 2020 | Outlet: Defense News | BY: Theresa Hitchens WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Mark Esper has ordered the military services to look to the Space Development Agency’s developing “data transport” satellites to connect their separate command and control systems for future all-domain operations, says SDA Director Derek Tournear. Speaking at a webinar…
OpEd: FCC and Ligado are undermining GPS – and with it, our economy and national security
Date: April 22, 2020 | Outlet: C4ISRNet | By Sen. Jim Inhofe, Sen. Jack Reed, Rep. Adam Smith, Rep. Mac Thornberry Right now, the coronavirus is rightly our country’s most immediate concern. But the Federal Communications Commission has used the crisis, under the cover of darkness, to approve a long-stalled application by Ligado Networks — a proposal…
US girds its satellite communications infrastructure in space during coronavirus pandemic
Date: April 18, 2020 | Outlet: CNBC.com | By Sarah Scoles In 2016 a Navy satellite called MUOS-5 wasn’t doing well. Partway to its intended orbit, it simply stalled out – but because the spacecraft was already so far away, the dilemma’s details were hard to discern. That’s where the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program…
Space Development Agency to seek bids for its first constellation
Date: April 2, 2020 | Outlet: SpaceNews | By Sandra Erwin SDA will issue a final solicitation for bids for the mesh network of satellites known as “transport layer” around May 1. WASHINGTON — The Space Development Agency intends to select two or more companies later this year to design, build and test a mesh…
SDA’s First Satellites Aim to Enable JADC2
Date: April 2, 2020 | Outlet: Air Force Magazine | By Rachel S. Cohen The Space Development Agency has released its draft request for proposals for an initial batch of 20 data-relay satellites known as the “Tranche 0 transport layer.” Pentagon officials see the transport layer as a way to unify the various space-based sensors that…
SPACE JUST IN: Space Development Agency to Award First Satellite Contracts by August
Date: April 2, 2020 | Outlet: National Defense Magazine | By Mandy Mayfield The Space Development Agency plans to have the first constellation of tracking and communications satellites in low-Earth orbit by 2022, the agency’s director said April 2. The first step will be to a “tranche zero constellation,” Derek Tournear told reporters during a press…