By Mike Stone<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, May 26 (Reuters) – The U.S. Space Force has awarded SpaceX a $2.29 billion contract to build \u200ca secure, high-speed satellite communications network to connect \u200cmilitary sensors and weapons platforms across the globe, the service announced on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The \u200bfixed-price nontraditional contracting agreement covers the Space Data Network (SDN) Backbone, a resilient network architecture providing high-capacity and low-latency data transport for the military.<\/p>\n
Space Force said the vendor must deliver a fully \u200coperational prototype capability by \u2060the end of 2027.<\/p>\n
Among other roles, the SDN will provide the communications pathways for integrating and \u2060moving data from missile warning and tracking sensors to interceptors in near real time \u2014 a capability seen as foundational to the \u200bTrump administration’s \u200bGolden Dome missile defense initiative.<\/p>\n
“The \u200bSDN Backbone leverages the \u200cbest of commercial innovation and delivers a strong foundation for the SDN mission set \u2014 a huge benefit and enabler for our warfighters,” said Space Force Colonel Ryan Frazier, the acting portfolio acquisition executive overseeing the program.<\/p>\n
The SDN Backbone is a proliferated \u200clow Earth orbit (pLEO) satellite constellation that \u200bwill expand a mesh of satellites \u200bdelivering worldwide communication services, \u200bthe Pentagon said. It will work alongside \u200cthe Space Development Agency’s Transport Layer \u200bto form a \u200bunified architecture providing critical data transport for current and future Department of Defense missions.<\/p>\n
The Space Force said it \u200bplans to identify \u200cadditional contractors for satellite construction and other network elements \u200bover the summer.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington; Editing \u200bby Mark Porter, Rod Nickel)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Mike Stone WASHINGTON, May 26 (Reuters) – The U.S. Space Force has awarded SpaceX a $2.29 billion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[291337,291338,79,291336,193,11716,1513],"class_list":["post-666933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-data-transport","tag-military-sensors","tag-science","tag-sdn","tag-space","tag-space-force","tag-spacex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}