Derek Tournear on Responses to SDA’s Space Transport Layer RFI

Derek Tournear, acting director of the Space Development Agency, told Defense News in an interview published Sunday that SDA received technical data when it issued in July a request for information on the planned transport layer for its proposed architecture of satellite constellations.

“That will allow us to customize when we actually put out solicitations,” he said of the responses to the RFI. “A lot of that had to do with exactly what orbits, and the number of satellites, we needed to be able to field for different missions.”

Tournear said the agency expects to release a solicitation on a transport demo, which will involve “two optical cross-links talking amongst two satellites and also down to the ground.”

He also discussed some of the changes to the planned satellite architecture and SDA’s reprogramming request.