General Dynamics Mission Systems and Iridium Communications have secured a contract from the Space Development Agency (SDA) in the US.
The contract has an estimated value of $324.5m, which includes a $162.95m base amount and $161.56m in options.
The contract involves establishing a ground operations and integration (O&I) segment for Tranche 1 of the US National Defence Space Architecture (NDSA).
The two companies will work together to build ground entry points and operations centres for NDSA.
Additionally, General Dynamics Mission Systems and Iridium will provide systems integration and network operations services for the SDA’s next tranche of proliferated low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites.
The core operations and integration functions encompass network, enterprise, mission and payload data management, along with constellation monitoring spanning the ground, link, space and user segments of the architecture.
General Dynamics Mission Systems president Chris Brady said: “We are incredibly proud to bring our long heritage of mission-critical space and ground communications and networking expertise to the SDA.
“Together with our partners, we’re excited to build the foundation for the SDA’s initial warfighting capability and backbone of Joint All-Domain Command and Control.”
General Dynamics Mission Systems and Iridium Communications team will work with partners at KSAT USA, Raytheon and EMERGENT to develop, equip, staff, operate and maintain commercial-like operations centres.
The companies will also acquire and operate ground entry points and support ground-to-space integration efforts.
Iridium CEO Matt Desch said: “Iridium, General Dynamics Mission Systems and the US Government have a long and successful history of working together and partnering on this project is a natural evolution of our relationship.
