Here's the first hardware for the @LockheedMartin SDA Transport Layer, which will include a laser crosslink from @TesatSpaceCom, enabling satellites to share data and achieve interoperability. @Telesat @TyvakNanoSat @innoflight #10Satellitesin2Years
The Space Development Agency expects Tranche 1 satellites to cost "significantly less" than the $14 million average price it paid for Tranche 0 satellites.WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency will solicit bids for an upcoming procurement of up to 150 satellites to be launched in late 2024, agency director Derek Tournear said March 4.A request for proposals will be issued in August and multiple contracts could be awarded before the end of the year, Tournear said at a Potomac Officers Club virtual conference.
https://twitter.com/lmnews/status/1366406631056105477QuoteHere's the first hardware for the @LockheedMartin SDA Transport Layer, which will include a laser crosslink from @TesatSpaceCom, enabling satellites to share data and achieve interoperability. @Telesat @TyvakNanoSat @innoflight #10Satellitesin2Years
The Biden administration’s defense budget proposal for fiscal year 2022 seeks more than $1.2 billion for military space systems in low-Earth orbit. According to budget documents released May 28, nearly $900 million of that investment is for the Space Development Agency’s communications network in low-Earth orbit (LEO) known as the Transport Layer. The Missile Defense Agency is seeking about $300 million for space sensors, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is requesting $42 million to deploy experimental satellites in LEO under the Blackjack program.
Launch services for Space Development Agency satellites will be procured under the National Security Space Launch program run by the U.S. Space Force, according to an agency announcement.
For the Transport Layer Tranche 1, SDA initially planned on allowing the satellite prime contractors to procure the launch services under commercial contracts. On July 26, the agency announced that launch services procurement will be handled by the Space Force’s NSSL program.“SDA now intends to procure launch services through the USSF NSSL Phase 2 contract. Accordingly, it is anticipated that the contractor procured launch services language will be removed from the final RFP [request for proposals],” SDA said.
You'd think they would want to on-ramp the upcoming small-launch firms like Relativity, Firefly, etc.
Among the science payloads on board Cygnus NG-16 is an infrared imaging sensor that will collect data on the low Earth orbit environment. The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency will use the data to develop thermal sensors that can detect hypersonic missiles and other advanced weapons while in flight.
The infrared imaging payload — called PIRPL (short for prototype infrared payload) — is a 110-pound multispectral camera also made by Northrop Grumman under a $13.8 million contract from the Space Development Agency (SDA) and the Missile Defense Agency. This is SDA’s first experiment in support of its Tracking Layer, a planned constellation of small sensor satellites in low Earth orbit. “Upon arrival at the Space Station, PIRPL will begin collecting infrared data and expanding detection capabilities that will aid in the development of algorithms for the next generation of tracking satellites,” Northrop Grumman said Aug. 9 in a news release.PIRPL will gather imagery through the entire NG-16 mission expected to last about three months. After Cygnus leaves the space station, PIRPL will be released from the spacecraft and briefly operate in free flying mode so it can collect more data from different angles before it burns up in the atmosphere, an SDA official said during a call with reporters.
Sensors in space that can detect and track hypersonic missiles should be at the top of DoD’s wish list, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten said Aug. 11.“I would like to have overhead sensors that see everything, characterize everything that goes on on this planet from a missile perspective, all the time, everywhere,” Hyten said in a speech at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium. Hyten, a career space and missile defense officer who grew up in Alabama, has been a regular keynoter at the SMD conference. This was his last appearance as a military leader as he is scheduled to retire in November.
The Space Development Agency (SDA) — which is building a large constellation of small satellites in low Earth orbit — last month announced that it will no longer procure launches commercially and will buy launch services through the NSSL program. SDA Director Derek Tournear said initially he did not want to use NSSL because it’s significantly more expensive than commercial launches. The NSSL customers pay for additional administrative cost, mission assurance and other markups. But after extensive negotiations, the Space Force agreed to remove some of those additional markups and gave SDA a better deal, Tournear said Aug. 24.
The Defense Department’s space agency on Aug. 30 released a request for proposals from satellite manufacturers that would compete for contracts to build as many as 144 satellites.The satellites will make up the Space Development Agency’s Transport Layer Tranche 1 — a mesh network of communications satellites in low Earth orbit projected to start launching in late 2024. According to the request for proposals (RFP), the agency intends to buy 126 baseline satellites and 18 additional ones for hosting other payloads. They will be divided into six orbital planes, to be awarded to multiple vendors.Companies are asked to bid for two of the orbital planes, with the associated ground equipment. All satellites have to be interoperable and able to share data via optical inter-satellite links, regardless of who manufactures them. Proposals are due in October and SDA expects to award contracts in January.
SDA plans have called for the Tranche 0 satellites to launch in September next year. The agency is “to mix and match” for the September launch, “depending on who’s ready,” Gattle said.“They’ve told us they’re watching to see who’s going to be ready to be on that first [September] launch,” he said. “There’s going to be a second launch early in 2023 so if you don’t make it on the first one, there’s a second one. It will really depend on the progress of each of the four companies to meet that [first] launch. They would like to have at least one [satellite] from every company so that they can show that each one has made it.”
The Space Development Agency revised a request for proposals that previously had sought bids for 144 satellites. It is now seeking proposals for 126 satellites, and will procure the other 18 at a later time.SDA Director Derek Tournear said Sept. 27 on a DefenseOne virtual event that the change was made after it was determined that the original plan to launch six stacks of 24 satellites would not work due to launch vehicle constraints. Each stack had to be reduced to 21 satellites.
Tournear did not elaborate on the specific launch vehicle constraints. According to industry sources, SDA had to reduce the stack to 21 because SpaceX’s Falcon 9 in its recoverable booster configuration could not accommodate 24 satellites in one launch. SpaceX and United Launch Alliance are the launch service providers under the the national security space launch Phase 2 contract. These sources said the Space Force required the SDA to configure its payloads so they could be launched by either provider.
The Space Development Agency on Oct. 8 issued a draft request for bids for 18 satellites that will carry experimental payloads. These 18 spacecraft will be integrated with SDA’s planned mesh network of 126 optically interconnected data transport satellites. SDA is already reviewing bids for the 126 satellites that will make up the Transport Layer Tranche 1, projected to launch in 2024. The additional 18 satellite are for the Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System, or T1DES.According to the draft request for proposals, “T1DES will augment the Tranche 1 Transport Layer constellation with demonstration and experimental capability.”
Maxar Technologies filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office Oct. 8 challenging a Space Development Agency solicitation seeking industry bids for 126 satellites. SDA on Aug. 30 issued a request for proposals for the Transport Layer Tranche 1 — a mesh network of small communications satellites in low Earth orbit projected to start launching in 2024. Proposals were due Oct. 8, the same day Maxar filed the protest. A spokesperson for SDA said in a statement to SpaceNews that the agency is “working with the GAO to achieve fast, accurate and equitable resolution to the protest received on the agency’s Tranche 1 Transport Layer solicitation. SDA is committed to full and open competition and the agency understands protests are a potential and not uncommon part of that process.”
In response to a protest filed Oct. 8 by Maxar Technologies, the Defense Department’s Space Development Agency is canceling a solicitation issued Aug. 30 seeking bids for 144 satellites and will start over with a new procurement, the agency said Oct. 28....GAO dismissed the protest after SDA agreed to cancel the solicitation and reopen a new one under a different contracting mechanism known as Other Transaction Authority. A new solicitation is being issued Oct. 28, said SDA spokesperson Jennifer Elzea.
