Interested firms have until Jan. 9 to respond to a Space Force request for information about new wide-field-of-view cameras for a SILENTBARKER replacement constellation.
Space Systems Command expects to issue a draft request for proposal by the end of the calendar year, a Space Force spokesperson told Breaking Defense.
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
"While this type of close approach activity does not automatically signify a military mission, it obviously could provide a co-orbital counterspace capability," expert Victoria Samson told Breaking Defense.
Space RCO Director Kelly Hammett envisions that his shop will feed tech into the Space Force's new effort to contract commercial firms to replace the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) satellites for monitoring the heavens.
Space Systems Command is moving out with a trio of projects — contracting with Northrop Grumman for two separate experiments, and with Astroscale US for the first on-orbit refueling operation involving a military satellite.
The idea behind the commercial reviews is to find potential alternatives for "getting us out of one-off, billion-dollar systems into a proliferated architecture," said Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy.
Reducing cognitive overload on warfighters while improving “time to trust” for autonomous systems is a matter of design.
"This will be a modified mission from the Victus Nox mission," David Ryan, space portfolio manager at the Defense Innovation Unit said, noting that "there are two parts of the mission, and DIU is working on a single part with Space Safari."
"In a sense, we drive our satellites today as if we're going to church. Our adversaries drive their satellites as if they're going to combat," Lt. Gen. John Shaw, who recently retired from US Space Command, told Breaking Defense in this Q&A.
As the Space Force prepares to launch highly classified space domain awareness satellites, China calls foul on purported close approaches to its sats by existing US birds.
The NRO is planning to award new contracts for commercial satellite imagery, perhaps including that of other satellites, the spy-sat agency's head of commercial operations, Pete Muend, said today.
Why edge and endpoint security can’t be an afterthought.
Stephen "Bucky" Butow, director of space at the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit summed up the end goal for future operations as creating a "blue collar space."
The two hosted payloads, designed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory, will keep tabs on spacecraft and dangerous debris in geosynchronous orbit (GEO).
Sergio Gallucci, SCOUT co-founder and chief technology officer, told Breaking Defense that its new AFWERX contract is focused on demonstrating its software for integrating and streamlining unclassified data from multiple satellites.
Space Force has established the new 19th Space Defense Squadron to monitor what officials now refer to as "xGEO" space.