The long-term future of one of the Space Development Agency’s two satellite constellations is on hold as officials study the options for replacing a planned “data transport layer” with one or more commercial solutions. President Trump’s proposed 2026 defense budget...
Derek M. Tournear, the director of the trailblazing Space Development Agency who was put on administrative leave in January amid an investigation into a disputed contract, will return to his duties April 17, the Department of the Air Force announced.
The Space Development Agency will start launching its next batch of satellites in March or April 2025, six months later than originally planned, but director Derek Tournear suggested he may try to increase the pace of launches after that to get back on schedule.
The Space Development Agency isn’t slowing down anytime soon. On Oct. 2, the organization released a notice to industry outlining its plans for a busy 2025 on the acquisition front, as it will look to procure around 200 satellites from different solicitations for Tranche 3 of ...
The Space Development Agency awarded contracts for the final 20 satellites in the second tranche of its proliferated low-Earth orbit constellation on Aug. 16, setting the stage for hundreds of satellites to launch in the next three years or so.
The Space Development Agency is fine-tuning and expanding its data transport satellites’ Link 16 connectivity, preparing for them to become the “backbone” of the Pentagon’s ambitious joint all-domain command and control system—and perhaps beyond that to NATO.
The Space Development Agency plans to spend roughly $25.5 billion from 2025 through the end of the decade building out its massive constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites, budget documents show.
Some of the satellites that will form the planned “backbone” of joint all-domain command and control may include “translation” payloads to let other satellites feed their data into the Pentagon’s massive mesh network, the head of the Space Development Agency said Oct. 25. SDA is ...
The Space Development Agency awarded L3Harris and Northrop Grumman Strategic Space Systems contracts to build Tranche 1 of the Tracking Layer for its planned National Defense Space Architecture, a multipurpose defense constellation. Each company will build 14 low-Earth-orbit satellites to detect and track the infrared ...
The Space Development Agency is looking to buy 10 satellites capable of carrying experimental payloads to integrate into its National Defense Space Architecture. The planned new satellites are being referred to as the National Defense Space Architecture Experimental Testbed, or NExT, and will “demonstrate warfighter ...
The Defense Department could have higher-resolution, global missile warning and tracking in place as soon as 2025. Congress seeded "Tranche 1" of the Space Development Agency’s Tracking Layer of its planned multi-use satellite constellation in the newly passed fiscal 2022 spending bill. The extra $550 million ...
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 are part of ...
