A National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) official said that the agency is looking to innovation, including that of small companies, as NRO plans to quadruple the number of its on-orbit satellites in the next decade.
“At the NRO, we’re keeping an eye out to find those truly disruptive technologies that are going to be game changers,” Col. Matthew Allen, the deputy director of NRO’s advanced systems and technology directorate, told a future directions panel at the Small Sat Conference in Logan, Utah, on Aug. 8, according to an NRO statement. “We want to partner with other government agencies, other nations, academia and the private sector, and work together from design to execution to get that technology into space.”
The topic of Allen’s address to the panel was “Taking Advantage of Technology Scalability to Deliver Mission Capabilities.”
“NRO is building the largest and most capable overhead constellation in its history, with the number of satellites on orbit expected to quadruple by the end of the decade,” per NRO’s Aug. 8 statement. “Innovation–from the ground to orbit to everywhere in between–is at the core of NRO’s progress.”
At the Space Symposium in Colorado in April, NRO Director Chris Scolese said that NRO and U.S. Space Force are collaborating on space-based ground moving target indication (GMTI) and that such technology is “there” based on already demonstrated capabilities and “now we’re in in the process of actually going into manufacturing and will start launching within the next eight to 12 months” (Defense Daily, Apr. 18).
Asked what to expect in the next 12 to 18 months on space-based GMTI, Scolese answered, “A lot of launches.”
The NRO Aug. 8 statement said that Allen told the Small Sat conference future directions panel of a planned responsive delivery demonstration next year with Firefly Aerospace, Inc. and Xtenti, LLC for space maneuver and “multiple vehicle deployment capabilities.”
“The mission, featuring Xtenti’s Flight Agnostic Non-interfering, Tunable Mass Rideshare Dispenser Equipment (FANTM-RiDE) dispenser, is scheduled to launch next year on board Firefly’s Elytra vehicle,” the NRO said. “NRO also joined the U.S. Space Force and industry partners in a SmallSat Side Meeting focused on innovative methods for identifying and categorizing on-orbit satellites–a strategy to ensure the safety and sustainability of space operations in low-earth orbit.”