Saturday, August 15, 2026

Space Force awards $60M for multi-vendor satellite network tests

Rocket LabAmazon Leo

The U.S. Space Force's Space Systems Command awarded $60 million on August 13 to five companies, Amazon Leo for Government, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab and York Space Systems, to demonstrate how satellites from multiple vendors can connect to its Space Data Network, the military communications architecture whose core backbone is built by SpaceX. Each company received $12 million split across a fixed-price prototype contract to test multi-vendor interconnectivity across the SDN backbone and an OTA agreement to seed development of Space Exchange Point satellites, with six-to-nine-month periods of performance.