The Air Force on July 10 awarded contracts to the first pool of potential hosted payload providers, selecting 14 companies to compete for future task orders that could be worth as much as $495 million. The contract, known as Hosted Payload Solutions (HoPS), creates a mechanism for companies to compete to carry government payloads on their commercially owned satellites and opens the door for greater government and industry partnerships in space acquisition. "The purpose of the multiple awarded HoPS IDIQ...