The Space Development Agency (SDA) has contracted SpaceX, Kuiper Government Solutions, and Aalyria Technologies for a study on Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) backhaul capability. The awards have a total value of $1.6 million. SDA announced the contracts in a LinkedIn post on Thursday, and said the studies will begin this week.
The awards were made under the Space Development Agency’s System, Technologies, and Emerging Capabilities (STEC) Broad Agency Announcement based on a special notice posted in May.
SpaceX operates the Starlink LEO constellation; Amazon [AMZN] is developing the Project Kuiper constellation, and Aalyria is a Google spin-off focusing on network orchestration software and laser communications.
According to the call for proposals, the SDA is considering expanding the Transport Layer of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) to include a LEO backhaul capability, “to provide a resilient path to quickly move broadband data between edge and main networks worldwide.” PWSA is a proliferated constellation architecture for beyond line of sight targeting and advanced missile detection and tracking.
The document specifies the SDA is looking for total capacity for an initial LEO backhaul capability on the order of 500 Gbps, with an overall system latency on the order of under 100 msec. Space-based backhaul services would need to support between 100 to 1,000 terrestrial users at the 2 to 10 Gbps rate, and support between 20,000 to 40,000 users at the 100-500 Mbps rate.
“The studies will examine connecting commercial or other existing LEO systems to the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture to provide further resiliency by quickly moving broadband data between edge and main networks worldwide and give the PWSA Transport Layer the greater ability to transmit and receive general high-bandwidth data across its systems,” SDA said in the announcement.
The 90-day studies will include market research on industry capabilities for this prospective LEO backhaul capability and inform potential government acquisition.