Lockheed Martin will help develop control systems for the UK's future satellite constellation. (Image: Lockheed Martin)
Lockheed Martin and UK company Rhea will develop a satellite control system as part of Project Beroe which will help control the country’s future ISTARI constellation.
The contracts with the companies, worth £4 million (US$5 million), are for the development of software for satellite system management, designed to capture and process onboard system data to control and monitor the performance of the satellite.
The programme will assist the MOD to understand how best to control its future constellation of low orbit general purpose Earth observation satellites.
Commodore David Moody, head of space capability at UK Space Command said: “This project will help define and understand how we will control and optimise the use of our satellites in a safe and sustainable way, while also supporting the wider goal of enabling growth in the Space Sector to develop resilient space capabilities and services.”
The MoD is using its Rapid Agile Prototyping, Scaled for Operations (RAPSO) commercial framework, which includes a series of Agile software development releases and work on the project is to be completed and demonstrated in 2025.
As part of the effort Lockheed Martin will use its Integrated Multi-Mission Ground (IM2G) product which is designed to support diverse space missions, orbital regimes and constellation sizes with mature, reconfigurable components and technologies within a hardened ground system.
IM2G uses Lockheed Martin’s Compass Mission Planning and Horizon C2 software, which allows single satellite or entire constellation management and can support fleets of similar or entirely different missions and satellite types.
The airborne three-domain, the two ground-based and the ¼ ATR OpenVPX-based cross-domain systems were engineered to provide real-time security across multi-domain operations.
DARPA’s Mission-Integrated Network Control (MINC) programme was set up to develop an autonomous tactical network and enable critical data flow in contested environments.
Why space is an essential part of modern military capabilities
Defence-secure mixed reality headsets can save hours, or even weeks, of travel time to fix defunct equipment or get subject experts effectively “on-site” where they are needed.
The Joint Counter Radio-Controlled Improvised Explosive Device Electronic Warfare (JCREW) counter-improvised explosive device (C-IED) and Drone Restricted Access Using Known Electromagnetic Warfare (DRAKE) counter-UAS (CUAS) systems are mounted and dismounted RF jammers.
Adarga’s Vantage information analysis tool is in service with the UK MoD and individual UK forces. It builds on the company’s Knowledge Platform which processes, organises and analyses open source material, as well as information held by the user’s military, security and intelligence services.
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