The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has received the first Blackjack satellite bus from Blue Canyon Technologies. Under a $14.1 million contract awarded in 2020, the company is required to deliver 10 Saturn-class satellite buses that can support up to 200 kilograms of payloads. According to BCT, its buses have advanced electric propulsion and radio […]
Amentum has secured a $59 million contract from the U.S. Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 30 to provide management, science and engineering services on launch systems used by government and commercial entities to fly rockets, missiles and satellite payloads. The contract entails managing unconventional fuels such as hypergolic, cryogenic and pneumatic commodities; providing personnel protective […]
NASA has selected SiFive to provide the main central processing unit for the next-generation High-Performance Spaceflight Computing processor. The company will supply five RISC-V cores, including the Intelligence X280 RISC-V vector core, to enable computational capability superior to existing space computers. Boosting computing performance will open new opportunities for autonomous rovers, vision processing, spaceflight, guidance […]
The U.S. Space Force has awarded Saber Astronautics a $540,000 tactical funding increase to continue developing a space awareness tool for satellite operators. Saber Astronautics will use the funding to add new features to its Space Cockpit software tool. Specifically, the company will upgrade the orbit propagation algorithms, which will support cislunar spaceflight beyond Earth […]
Ball Aerospace & Technology will supply the laser prestabilization system for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna laser assembly under an $11.9 million contract from NASA. The product will be among the space agency’s contributions to the LISA mission, which aims to detect and study gravitational waves emanating from spacetime distortions to discover other parts of […]
The Clear Space Force Station in Alaska will host a gateway site that will be built to support the operations of two payloads that will be deployed in 2023 to highly elliptical orbits. The satellite communications office within the Space Systems Command marked the beginning of the teleport’s construction with a groundbreaking ceremony earlier this […]
SpaceX has secured a $1.44 billion NASA contract modification to continue providing crew transport services. The contract is for the aerospace company’s Crew 10 to Crew 14 flights, which will bring astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX will also provide necessary launch services, including ground support, in-orbit operations, return and recovery and cargo transportation. […]
Lt. Gen. John Shaw, U.S. Space Command’s deputy commander, said his organization is seeking space domain awareness, autonomous systems and maneuver and logistics capabilities from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Speaking at the DARPA Forward conference in Fort Collins, Colorado, Shaw explained that SPACECOM wants to be cognizant of debris, incidental hazards and deliberate threats […]
NASA plans to introduce the Consolidated Applications and Platform Services vehicle, which would merge ten information technology services contracts into an eight-year, single-award procurement. In a special notice posted on SAM.gov, the agency released a document detailing why it determined the move to be justified. One of the reasons NASA gave is to streamline processes and save […]
NASA has canceled the launch of Artemis 1 due to an issue with the Space Launch System. Launch operators were not able to chill one of the rocket’s four main engines to the temperature needed to handle its propellant. Controllers could not troubleshoot the issue, resulting in the cancellation of the launch. Engineers spotted the […]
