Space Force picks 14 for $1.8B object tracking contract
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By
Ross Wilkers
Established defense market giants and newer, mostly venture-backed startups are in the awardee pool.
Space Force has awarded 14 companies positions on a potential 10-year, $1.8 billion contract vehicle to build satellites and other systems for use in space domain awareness efforts.
The Andromeda program’s pool of winners represent a mix of established defense market giants and newer, mostly venture-backed startups that will compete for task orders to build spacecraft. Space Force received 32 offers for the firm-fixed-price contract, the Pentagon said in its Wednesday awards digest.
Winners are as follows:
- Anduril Industries
- Astranis
- BAE Systems
- General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems
- Intuitive Machines
- L3Harris Technologies
- Lockheed Martin
- Millennium Space Systems, the Boeing subsidiary
- Northrop Grumman
- Quantum Space
- Redwire
- Sierra Space
- True Anomaly
- Turion Space
The final solicitation for Astromeda was released in January and does not detail much about the contract, other than that its first delivery order will be for the RG-XX program.
Space Force set up the RG-XX effort to develop a constellation for providing reconnaissance and surveillance of resident space objects in and around geosynchronous earth orbit.
In general, space domain awareness refers to the practice of tracking and identifying objects in space to determine if they are threatening or not.