Dec 4, 2024 | View Online

Good morning. Happy May! This month is poised to be a big one for the space community, with the first crewed launch of Starliner just a couple days away. 

Today's newsletter:
🛰️ SDA awards FOO Fighter contract
🍁 Canada hosts Artemis Accords working group
💸 The term sheet

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Image: Millennium Space Systems

Millennium Space Systems secured a $414M contract on Tuesday to build eight fire control-enabled satellites for the SDA that can detect and track advanced missile systems. 

“The FOO Fighter program will provide an operational demonstration of fire control efforts separate from, but complementary to, our missile warning/missile tracking and missile defense efforts already underway in the tranches,” said SDA director Derek Tournear. 

The Fire-Control On Orbit-Support-To-The-War Fighter (or FOO Fighter) mission is expected to launch in the first quarter of fiscal year 2027. 

Best of you: Through its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), the SDA is deploying a missile defense constellation in LEO. The FOO Fighter demo satellites will help the cause with its fire control satellite sensing capabilities. 

As for specifics on the experimental FOO Fighter constellation and the missile system threats it is designed to track—that’s on a need to know basis. 

“There’s a handful of…threats—that’s where it gets classified—that are not being addressed by those mainline programs,” Tournear said last year.

What we do know is that advanced electro-optical and infrared sensors for fire control tech will be key to the FOO Fighter satellites. 

Fire control sensing:  Fire control is an advanced missile tracking capability that can keep an eye on threats with the precision and latency necessary to send an interceptor to destroy them. 

“Fire control is going to be an indispensable mission,” Masao Dahlgren, a fellow at the Center of Strategic and International Studies, told Payload. “It will be indispensable for the FOO Fighter constellation and in the tracking layer constellation for tracking hypersonic missiles with enough fidelity to actually intercept them.” 

LEO, GEO, MEO: Millennium previously won MEO and GEO Pentagon contracts to build missile warning and tracking satellites. 

“Our deep knowledge and understanding of this mission enabled us to engineer the right solution at the right cost, taking advantage of our common sensing vehicle and core components,” said Millennium chief Jason Kim.

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Graphic: NASA

Artemis Accords signatories will meet in Montreal this month to discuss best practices and guidelines for responsible and sustainable space exploration. 

The annual meeting for the 39 nations who have signed onto the non-binding agreement is a follow-on to last year’s gathering in Poland and will allow officials to come together ahead of the IAC meeting in Milan this fall.  

“This is just a starting point, so the Artemis Accords is an opportunity for dialogue and a recognition that we have a shared responsibility to explore in a sustainable way,” Canadian astronaut Jenni Gibbons said at the Meridian Space Diplomacy Forum. 

In the grind: Valda Vikmanis-Keller, who leads the State Department’s space office, was careful to point out that while the meeting is an opportunity for face-to-face discussions, it’s far from the only time signatories are talking to each other.

“It’s not a ‘here’s a meeting and then we do something on the margins of the IAC.’ These are real, in-the-weeds discussions about shared interests and shared concerns,” she said. “There’s a meaning to it. It’s not simply a symbolic getting together of space agency representatives.” 

Participation points: Countries who sign the Accords don’t have any obligation to participate in these meetings, said Karen Feldstein, NASA’s associate administrator for international and interagency relations. Despite that, participation levels are pretty high, she said. As an example: at the first meeting of agency leaders from signatory nations, held in Paris, officials from 17 of the 19 countries attending spoke, regardless of their country’s heritage in space.

At last year’s meeting, Feldstein said officials figured out a process for sharing information about missions, including what data should be collected and which office would handle disseminating the news. 

“We just did that for the first two CLPS missions,” she said. “We took this process that we decided on as a group of signatories because we created a home for those discussions.”

Here are the top three government opportunities for space companies, as compiled weekly by our partner TZero. 

🌍 SSC released an RFI for space-based environmental monitoring capabilities. Responses are due May 29.

🚀 MDA released an RFI for MRBM and ICBM launch vehicle targets. Responses are due May 9.

🔬 AFRL released an open BAA seeking next generation distributed AI-based command and control capabilities.

Additional opportunities and details can be found in the TZero Space Tracker, which is offering a free one month trial.

Image: Vast

Vast showing off its Haven-1 commercial space station hardware.

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