Australia looks towards space with force restructure, investment and training
Australia is looking to improve its presence in space with a focus on communications and creating a dedicated segment of its defence forces committed to the domain.
ASBM-1 satellite enters thermal vacuum environmental testing at Northrop Grumman’s satellite manufacturing facility. (Photo: Northrop Grumman)
The two-satellite ASBM constellation will deliver protected SATCOM to the northern polar region and is a combined effort between the US Space Force, Space Norway and Northrop Grumman.
ASBM uses the Northrop Grumman GEOStar-3 platform, which includes the main structure and systems required to maintain operation, such as power, propulsion, communications, command and data handling and thermal control as well as guidance and navigational control. Northrop Grumman also provides the payload and ground system.
The Control and Planning Segment (CAPS) ground system was delivered to the USSF in March following successful completion of the site acceptance test and functional configuration audit/physical configuration.
Northrop Grumman to provide Norway satellites
CAPS is currently transitioning to the operations phase which opens the door for using the ground system for early operations with the two on-orbit operational payloads along with the capability to support the two Enhanced Polar System Recapitalization (EPS-R) payloads after the ASBM launch.
As well, integration of the EPS-R payload on ASBM-1 and ASBM-2 has finished and thermal-vacuum environmental testing on ASBM-1 has been successfully completed.
Australia is looking to improve its presence in space with a focus on communications and creating a dedicated segment of its defence forces committed to the domain.
The Portuguese company’s naval communications system is in service across more than a dozen countries. It has turned to its home nation for support in developing a new vehicle based C2 system.
The Vision4ce Deep Embedded Feature Tracking (DEFT) technology software is designed to process video and images by blending traditional computer vision with artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to present actionable information from complex environments.
Persistent Systems has been cleared by National Security Agency (NSA) to transmit sensitive data on commercial networks. The devices are added to the NSA’s Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) component list which also includes other companies’ products providing the same security.
The release of the UK’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) has been long promised as mid-year. It is possible it could be as early as 2 June although the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) continues to play its cards close to its chest.
Intelsat outlines how its multi-orbit SATCOM architecture is enhancing connectivity and resilience for special operations forces operating in degraded and contested environments.