The National Reconnaissance Office’s Office of Space Launch has awarded Cognitive Space, Impulse Space and Starfish Space separate contracts to assess and evaluate advanced space technologies.
Awarded under the Broad Agency Announcements for Agile Launch Innovation and Strategic Technology Advancement—a.k.a. BALISTA—framework, the agreements require the selected companies to assess and test new mission capabilities that can solve critical intelligence problems, NRO said on Wednesday.
BALISTA Details
Launched in March, the BALISTA effort also intends to explore other areas of interest, such as in-space mobility and maneuver, on-orbit logistics and sustainability, mission acceleration, artificial intelligence for ground operations and spacecraft propellant particle count.
According to OSL, the BAA intends to create additional opportunities to promote NRO’s commitment to rapid acquisition and commercial space innovation.
“This BAA helps NRO advance emerging technologies across launch, on-orbit support, and command and control,” Col. Eric Zarybnisky, the OSL director, said in a statement.
NRO’s Mission
Driven by its mission to meet the intelligence requirements of the United States and its allies, NRO is working to build next-generation intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems to ensure that the right data is delivered to the right user at the right time.
