Brenda Marie Rivers
The Space Development Agency is soliciting concepts for space technologies to support a proposed defense architecture for hypersonic missile tracking and position, navigation and timing operations.
SDA said in a notice posted Friday on the beta SAM website it seeks to demonstrate “novel technical capabilities†to inform the development of the National Defense Space Architecture’s custody, navigation and tracking layers.
According to the broad agency announcement, technologies under the Mission-Specific Application Prototypes initiative must support ground and on-orbit data processing as well as future deterrence operations in deep space or beyond geosynchronous Earth orbit.
SDA envisions NDSA to have a transport layer for low-latency military data transmission as well as other layers for support, left-of-launch custody, missile tracking, PNT and battle management command, control and communications.
BMC3 integrates all of NDSA’s functional layers and includes open-system satellite networks as well as software built to handle large volumes of data.
SDA plans to conduct a capstone demonstration for NDSA in fiscal 2023 to assess the prototypes’ capacities for satellite-based tracking, datalink transmission and BMC3 on-orbit software updates. The agency expects contract work to conclude by September 30, 2021.
Interested parties must submit proposals for the MSAP effort through Aug. 21.
