General Atomics Awarded U.S. Space Force Contract for Phase 2 of the Enterprise Space Terminal Program
"GA-EMS, under a Phase 1 contract award, leveraged its extensive Optical Communication Terminal (OCT) expertise to develop a design that can be efficiently scaled to deploy a mesh network enterprise of OCTs with capabilities to transfer large volumes of data between spacecraft and ground stations distributed across a wide spectrum of operational domains," said Scott Forney, president of GA-EMS. "We are excited to enter Phase 2 to advance our system design and begin the build and test of the OCT subsystems."
Phase 2 will include lab demonstrations of OCT subsystems within a government provided test bed. GA-EMS will continue design and analyses activities to optimize the system designs. Testing results and analyses will then be presented during a Critical Design Review (CDR) at the end of Phase 2 period of performance.
"The Phase 2 CDR will help inform the decision gate toward entering Phase 3 of the program, which will call for the assembly, test, and delivery of an integrated prototype OCT system for demonstration on a government provided test bed," said Gregg Burgess, vice president of GA-EMS Space Systems. "We look forward to delivering a robust, producible Optical Communication Terminal for the Space Force to ensure resilient space network connectivity for future National Security Space Architectures."
GA-EMS completed the preliminary design of the payload support system, electrical hardware, laser terminal design, optical design and subsystem, thermal control, and command and data handling under the EST Phase 1 contract awarded in 2024. As prime contractor, GA-EMS has teamed with L3Harris for the modem subsystem and Advanced Space to provide performance modelling.
Contact Information
General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems Media Relations ems-mediarelations@ga.com8589646989
SOURCE: General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems
View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire
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