Space Force Adds 5 New Vendors to Space Data Network Project

The Space Force announced five new contract awards for its Space Data Network, broadening the vendor base for the proliferated data transport constellation. 

Five companies—Rocket Lab, York Space Systems, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Amazon LEO for Government—will receive $12 million each to demonstrate data connectivity between their satellites and those built by other vendors, the Space Force anounced Aug. 13. Each vendor must also develop and field Space Exchange Point satellites—essentially routers that can connect directly to the network’s backbone.

“By combining on-orbit testing of high-speed optical communications routing with rigorous physical, electrical, and data interface standards, the Space Force aims to build a repeatable, secure baseline which allows different commercial satellite offerings to contribute to the network,” Space Systems Command said in a press release. 

The Space Force’s vision is for SDN to manage both tactical and enterprise communication needs. The contracts follow a massive $2.9 billion deal awarded to SpaceX in May to build the SDN Backbone, an integrated, high-capacity satellite network for moving data. SpaceX is slated to deliver an operational prototype by the end of next year.

The initial award sparked concern that SpaceX would dominate the program, but Space Force officials say SDN will be competitive, with many opportunities for other providers to contribute. Col. Ryan Frazier, portfolio acquisition executive for space-based sensing and tracking—including SDN—made that committment clear in the press release. 

The new awards help lay the groundwork for a multi-vendor SDN by focusing on integration, standardized interfaces, digital models, and security protocols.

“We have to break away from the old way of doing business, which too often locked the government into single-source vendors for decades,” Frazier said. “By investing in standardized interfaces now, we are creating a clear runway for any capable and innovative company to come in and compete. It keeps the playing field level and ensures we can constantly bring the best commercial technology to our missions.”

Details about the SDN architecture have slowly trickled out since the Space Force first revealed its plans earlier this year. Space Force officials have not yet provided a full picture of what programs will fall under the SDN umbrella and how they’ll be woven together and orchestrated. 

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink acknowledged the lack of messaging clarity, noting in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine that Frazier is working to provide a clearer picture of the SDN architecture. 

For now, the plan is for the program to integrate the proliferated low-Earth orbit backbone with the Space Development Agency’s transport and missile tracking layers as well as the Space Force’s more traditional military satellite communications constellations, like the Protected Tactical SATCOM program. 

“Think about this as more of a unified architecture,” Frazier said. “[It’s] how we get data to support the Space Force’s architecture and how we support the joint force. We just do that through lots of different, specific systems.”

Over the next year, Frazier’s focus within SDN will be making progress on SpaceX’s mesh network as well as setting the conditions to integrate new vendors and make sure all of those systems are interoperable. 

“We’re going to be really working on making an integrated architecture, and several fairly modest investments with multiple vendors to work on interoperability into the Space Data Network backbone that are required to enable the rest of the Space Force and joint force architecture,” he said. “We need to be able to connect other parts of the architecture into the backbone, make sure data is getting to users at the time and place that they need it.”

Frazier also noted that the satellites the service is buying from SpaceX are “100 percent government-owned” and aren’t just copied from the company’s Starlink broadband satellites.

“There are design changes to account for government-unique requirements, and that’s for security and resiliency,” he said, declining to expand on those differences or the number of satellites SpaceX will provide.

The Space Force is crafting a plan for what comes after SDA’s transport layer, which was intended to provide critical tactical communications links for military targeting. The Space Force plans to stop funding the effort after it launches its second tranche of satellites next year, but needs an alternative solution for beyond-line-of-sight coverage. 

“The Space Force is completely committed to doing that, and so we’re building a roadmap to do that in a seamless fashion,” Frazier said. “Some of those details, they’ll be shared as time goes on.”