The U.S. Space Force has awarded five companies a total of $60 million to test the ability of satellite systems from different providers to connect to the Space Data Network (SDN), a military communications architecture whose core infrastructure is being built by SpaceX.
Space Systems Command announced on August 13 that Amazon LEO for Government, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab, and York Space Systems each received $12 million through prototype contracts and agreements. The projects will test communications between commercial satellite systems and the SDN, including in-orbit data transfer and standardized interfaces that allow different providers to operate across the same network.
Testing Connectivity with the Infrastructure
The SDN is a planned communications network architecture in low Earth orbit, designed to transport large amounts of data between satellites, as well as between space and ground stations. In May, SpaceX won a $2.29 billion contract to build the backbone of the Space Data Network, or SDN-B, a constellation of satellites that uses optical intersatellite links to route data from one satellite to another.
The new awards focus on how systems provided by other companies will connect to this backbone. This issue is an important part of the Space Force’s effort to avoid locking the broader network to a single provider, while allowing multiple commercial and government systems to connect to the shared infrastructure.
Prototype Contracts and Transport Tests
Each company received a fixed-price contract valued at $10 million, with work lasting up to nine months to develop prototypes and conduct demonstrations showing communications between multiple providers through the SDN backbone. The demonstrations will include testing data transfers from the ground to space and from space to space, to verify the ability of different commercial systems to communicate through the network’s central infrastructure.
The remaining amount, $2 million per company, will be provided through six-month Other Transaction Authority agreements. These agreements support the Space Force’s planned concept of “space exchange points.”
Exchange Points to Expand the Network
Space exchange points will operate as orbital routers, providing connection points through which separate commercial networks and government satellite systems can exchange data with the SDN backbone.
The five companies were selected through the Space Data Network Consortium, an industry group established by the Space Force to address the technical and architectural challenges associated with connecting systems supplied by multiple providers. While SpaceX is building the initial core network, the consortium aims to help the Space Force establish a broader architecture to which other commercial and government systems can connect.
The network architecture, which includes multiple links and paths, could allow military data to be rerouted when specific links or satellites fail, and could also reduce reliance on a single provider as the network expands.