The Space Development Agency picked 19 companies to comprise its first vendor pool to solicit and rapidly award prototype contracts for demonstration satellites.
The non-traditional defense companies won indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts for the Hybrid Acquisition for Proliferated Low-Earth Orbit (HALO), SDA announced yesterday. The initial agreement is valued at $20,000, but as contract holders, they can now compete for other transaction agreements.
The orders will focus on rapid, end-to-end mission demonstrations with launches of two identical satellites within 18 months of the award.
The first HALO orders will coincide with the Tranche 2 Demonstration and Experimentation System and will demonstrate feasibility of proliferation for future data links.
“Through HALO, SDA has an even faster and more flexible contracting mechanism in place to compete and award T2DES and other SDA demonstration projects,” said SDA Director Derek Tournear. “We believe HALO will also increase the pool of performers capable of bidding on future SDA programs, including participation in layers of future tranches.”
The companies awarded the contracts are Airbus U.S. Space & Defense, Apex Technology, AST Space Mobile, Astro Digital, Capella Space, CesiumAstro, Firefly Aerospace, Geneva Technologies, Impulse Space, Kepler Communications, Kuiper Government Solutions, LeoStella, Momentous Space, Muon Space, NovaWurks, SpaceX, Turion Space, Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems and York Space Systems.
The companies submitted proposals for at least one of three representative orders: the S-band payload Europa, the translator satellite Titan or the tracking dual function Deimos. They will now compete for more specific orders, according to SDA.