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…

House Armed Services Committee ranking member Mac Thornberry, R-Texas

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…

A rendering of a GSSAP satellite in deep space. Air Force Space Command

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…

Space Force Prompts Pentagon Effort to Streamline Its Purchasing

Date: February 13, 2020 | Outlet: Bloomberg Government | By Travis J. Tritten The military’s two-month-old Space Force is on trajectory for major growth but the Pentagon is still weighing an overhaul of how it buys and develops the hardware needed. Past programs have suffered from poor planning and bureaucracy amid threats from adversaries, lawmakers…

Space Development Agency Rolling Out Solicitations

Date: Jan. 21, 2020 | Outlet: National Defense Magazine | By Jon Harper The Space Development Agency released a broad agency announcement Jan. 21 for new technologies, and additional solicitations will be coming down the pipeline soon, the organization’s director told reporters. The SDA is charged with accelerating the development and fielding of cutting edge…

SDA’s 2020 Plans Take Shape

Date: Jan. 22, 2020 | Outlet: Air Force Magazine | By Rachel S. Cohen The Space Development Agency in 2020 is embarking on its first full year of work to put up potentially thousands of satellites that aim to share combat data in new ways and better protect US interests. After standing up in March 2019,…

Space Development Agency Addresses Growing Capability Gaps

Date: July 23, 2019 | Outlet: DOD News | BY DAVID VERGUN The space domain is vital to warfighters, with information from satellites used for such things as communications, missile tracking and navigation. However, there are gaps that near-peer competitors such as China could exploit, said Derek M. Tournear, acting director of the Defense Department’s Space Development…

What will the Space Development Agency really do?

Date: July 24, 2019 | Outlet: C4ISRNet | By Nathan Strout During an industry day July 23, Space Development Agency leaders explained how their organization differentiates itself from the military’s other space-related organizations. (DoD photo by EJ Hersom) In the four months since it was officially established, the Space Development Agency has been a bit…