According to a statement from SpaceDev, the Air Force Research Lab’s Space Vehicles Directorate has awarded the Poway, Calif.-based company a $1.25 million contract to design a nanosatellite that can “independently” provide an assessment of the local space environment around a host satellite. The tiny sat already has a big name—Autonomous Nanosatellite Guardian for Evaluating Local Space, or ANGELS for short. SpaceDev says they will be working with BAE Systems, Emergent, SAIC, Schafer, and Vacco to design and construct these sats “in a short timeframe and at a low cost.” The contract requires flight experimentation by 2009.
Raytheon, a division of defense giant RTX, recently announced a multiyear deal with the Pentagon to increase annual production of the Air Force’s primary dogfighting missile by more than 50 percent from two years ago.
