{"id":51085,"date":"2024-06-18T22:34:25","date_gmt":"2024-06-18T14:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/us-space-force-awards-general-atomics-blue-origin-viasat-caci-laser-terminal-prototype-contracts\/"},"modified":"2024-06-18T22:34:25","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T14:34:25","slug":"us-space-force-awards-general-atomics-blue-origin-viasat-caci-laser-terminal-prototype-contracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/us-space-force-awards-general-atomics-blue-origin-viasat-caci-laser-terminal-prototype-contracts\/","title":{"rendered":"US Space Force Awards General Atomics, Blue Origin, Viasat, CACI Laser Terminal Prototype Contracts"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p data-uw-rm-sr=\"\">The <strong>U.S. Space Force<\/strong>\u2019s Space Systems Command (SSC) said on June 17 that it has awarded laser communication terminal prototype contracts to&nbsp;<strong>General Atomics<\/strong>,&nbsp;<strong>Blue Origin<\/strong>,&nbsp;<strong>CACI International Inc.<\/strong>, and <strong>Viasat<\/strong>&nbsp;in the first of three phases of the $100 million Enterprise Space Terminal (EST) program.<\/p>\n<p>The awards came through SSC\u2019s Space Enterprise Consortium (SpEC), created in 2017 to lower costs by widening the field of military space providers to commercial startups and small businesses.<\/p>\n<p>EST \u201caims to enable on-orbit crosslink compatibility among future space systems via the use of a standardized enterprise waveform implemented in a long-range space optical communications terminal that is low size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C),\u201d SSC said. \u201cESTs are a key building block of the broader Space Data Network, which will build a space mesh network for resiliency and information path diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Space Force\u2019s Space Development Agency (SDA) has been a key mover in the development of anti-jamming, high data rate, space laser communications as a key part of SDA\u2019s Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites in the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe EST program leverages prior investment by the Department of Defense and commercial developers to operationalize a new enterprise waveform designed to communicate in the Beyond Low Earth Orbit (bLEO) regimes,\u201d SSC said on June 17.<\/p>\n<p>John Kirkemo, senior materiel leader of SSC\u2019s advanced communications acquisition Delta, said in the June 17 SSC statement that the four EST prototypes \u201cwill be a huge step forward for a future space mesh network across different orbital regimes ranging from Low-Earth Orbit to past the Geosynchronous Orbit regime.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese terminals will implement a common waveform so all satellites carrying these terminals can talk to each other,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p><em>This story was first published by Defense Daily<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Space Force\u2019s Space Systems Command (SSC) said on June 17 that it has awarded laser communication terminal prototype contracts to&nbsp;General Atomics,&nbsp;Blue Origin,&nbsp;CACI International Inc., and Viasat&nbsp;in the first of three phases of the $100 million Enterprise Space Terminal (EST) program. The awards came through SSC\u2019s Space Enterprise Consortium (SpEC), created in 2017 to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51085"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}