Every Cosmic Herald story on Space Development Agency — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
SDA launched 21 more York-built data-relay satellites after a nine-month pause to fix on-orbit software and hardware issues, bringing half of its 126-satellite Tranche 1 Transport Layer into orbit even as GAO warns the program may not deliver capability on schedule.
Read the story →L3Harris and Sierra Space will build 36 new missile-tracking satellites for $1.75 billion, pushing the Space Development Agency's Tranche 3 constellation to 104 spacecraft in support of the Golden Dome missile-defense architecture.
The Space Development Agency awarded L3Harris and Sierra Space a combined $1.75 billion on July 13 to build 36 missile-tracking satellites for Golden Dome's Tranche 3, targeting launch by the end of 2028.
York Space Systems' Dragoon satellite ran five successful two-way UHF tactical-comms demos from low Earth orbit, and coverage indicates the SDA is trimming its satellite buy — reportedly canceling 11 — on the strength of the result.
When a Starlink outage last August left Navy unmanned surface vessels bobbing uselessly off the California coast, it crystallized a strategic anxiety the Pentagon had been managing quietly: the U.S. military is profoundly dependent on a commercial satellite network it does not own or control.
The Space Development Agency is building a mesh network of hundreds of small military satellites in low Earth orbit — a fundamentally different approach to space-based command and control than anything the US has operated before.
GPS III, Next Gen OPIR missile warning satellites, and the Evolved Strategic SATCOM program are replacing Cold War-era systems that have been showing their age. The upgrades are designed to survive a contested space environment that didn't exist when the original satellites were built.
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