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NASA Tests Autonomy Software for Space Robots; Trey Smith Quoted
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NASA Tests Autonomy Software for Space Robots; Trey Smith Quoted

NASA has tested the performance of software that allows a spacecraft's robotic and operating systems to operate autonomously.

Bumble, an Astrobee flying robot at the International Space Station, used the Integrated System for Autonomous and Adaptive Caretaking or ISAAC to navigate through ISS and detect a simulated ventilation block in April, NASA said Wednesday.

The robot autonomously detected an “astronaut sock” that simulated a foreign object disrupting ventilation, then reported the issue for help. Bumble also autonomously surveyed Bay 6 of the Japanese Exploration Module within ISS.

The tests challenged the ISAAC-equipped Bumble to navigate and traverse through areas with obstacles, including stray cables and communication interruptions.

“Our long-term vision is that it can transform a spacecraft into an autonomous robotic system itself,” said Trey Smith, project manager for ISAAC at NASA’s California-based Ames Research Center.

The team is now working on ISAAC's second testing phase, which involves multiple robots transporting cargo between a spacecraft and a space station.

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Army Tests Combat Capability of Directed Energy Prototype; Director L. Neil Thurgood Quoted
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Army Tests Combat Capability of Directed Energy Prototype; Director L. Neil Thurgood Quoted

The U.S. Army produced and tested its first combat-capable directed energy prototype after two years of development, creating what can potentially deter enemy rockets, artillery, mortars and drones.

The Army said Tuesday its Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) sent a laser-armed Stryker vehicle to Fort Sill in Oklahoma this summer for the Combat Shoot-Off exercise, which ended in late July.

“This is the first combat application of lasers for a maneuver element in the Army,” said Lt. Gen. L. Neil Thurgood, the Army’s director for hypersonics, directed energy, space and rapid acquisition.

The Army subjected the vehicle to scenarios that simulated short-range air and missile defense (SHORAD). These scenarios were specifically designed to trial the SHORAD performance of directed energy weapons.

Thurgood said the tests aimed to demonstrate the technology’s safety and targeting performance.

“It’s time to give our Soldiers this first-ever operational capability,” he said after stating that the technology’s research and development phase has concluded.

NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby Commences Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s New Office, Conference Annex
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NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby Commences Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s New Office, Conference Annex

Jill Hruby, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), led Tuesday the inauguration of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) new office building and conference annex intended to facilitate partnerships of agencies, industry and the academe. 

The interconnected buildings feature modernized office and meeting areas for predictive biology researchers, materials and manufacturing, innovation and partnerships office of LLNL and the High-Performance Computing Innovation Center, NNSA said Wednesday.

The 25,000-square-feet Building 642 has 105 offices, two double-sized offices, conference rooms and collaboration spaces while the 2,975-square-foot annex called Building 643 has a lobby and breakroom and can lodge around 90 people. 

Hruby said that the past 18 months proved that office work can be done at home and other locations but “most of us draw energy from the people around us.” 

“Face-to-face interactions allow us to engage in robust dialogue with colleagues, to sharpen our ideas and thinking, and to mentor and build trust among our work teams in ways that cannot be replicated across a computer screen,” she added. 

The construction of the buildings, which is part of the Lab’s Livermore Valley Open Campus' ongoing expansion, started in August 2020. LLNL staff are expected to move into the offices late summer.

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Adam Tarsi: DOD’s Mobile Autonomous Indoor Capabilities Challenge Seeks to Showcase Military AI Innovations
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Adam Tarsi: DOD’s Mobile Autonomous Indoor Capabilities Challenge Seeks to Showcase Military AI Innovations

The Department of Defense, Israel Ministry of Defense and Merage Institute will be hosting an indoor autonomous maneuver technologies challenge intended to advance never-before-seen innovations that will benefit the military and law enforcement tactical operators.

The Mobile Standoff Autonomous Indoor Capabilities (MoSAIC) challenge follows a memorandum of agreement between the Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate (IWTSD) under the Assistant Secretary of Defense and Low-Intensity Conflict organization and the Directorate of Defense Research and Engineering of IMOD, the DOD said Wednesday. 

MoSAIC will consist of five minichallenges, three of which are virtual while the other two will be physical activities such as indoor navigation, room mapping and through-wall imaging. 

Adam Tarsi, IWTSD international program manager, said he is looking forward to witnessing technologies that leverage artificial intelligence, small multirotor drones and tactical ground vehicles capable of navigating through complicated environments. 

"The MoSAIC challenge is a rare opportunity for entrepreneurs, researchers and companies to present the technology they develop to the U.S. and Israeli governments, to create international collaborations,” said Paul Merage, founder and CEO of the Merage Institute.

Winners and runners-up are set to receive cash and other prizes with a combined amount of $600,000. The DOD noted that the physical testbed for the challenge is slated to happen in the spring of 2022 in Yeruham, Israel.

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Two New Customers Subscribe to Maxar Technologies Rapid Access Program; Tony Frazier Quoted
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Two New Customers Subscribe to Maxar Technologies Rapid Access Program; Tony Frazier Quoted

Maxar Technologies announced on Thursday that the company has recently signed two new customers to multi-million dollar contracts to subscribe to its Rapid Access Program (RAP). 

“Maxar’s Rapid Access Program provides customers with assured access to task our satellites without the need for a physical ground station,” said Tony Frazier, executive vice president of Global Field Operations for Maxar and a five-time Wash100 Award recipient. 

RAP provides customers with a secure web interface to virtually task Maxar’s high-resolution satellites through on-demand access windows. Maxar delivers high-resolution imagery within hours of collection due to streamlined processing and dissemination. 

National Institute of Aeronautics and Space of Indonesia (LAPAN) is Maxar’s second RAP customer in the Asia-Pacific region. LAPAN will task Maxar’s high-resolution satellite imagery to accelerate mapping missions in Indonesia, including land certification, industrial priority zones and special economic zones.  

The Colombian Air Force is the second new RAP customer and the first international defense organization in Latin America to partner with Maxar in the program. The customer will use RAP for mission planning and monitoring areas of interest.

“This lower barrier to entry for tasking provides opportunities for Maxar to serve our RAP customers with the high-quality imagery that they have come to depend on while offering them greater autonomy in tasking the most agile satellites on orbit,” Frazier added.

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Inmarsat Unveils Inmarsat ELERA to Support Global Network for IoT, Safety and Mission Critical Connectivity; CEO Rajeev Suri Quoted
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Inmarsat Unveils Inmarsat ELERA to Support Global Network for IoT, Safety and Mission Critical Connectivity; CEO Rajeev Suri Quoted

Inmarsat announced on Thursday that the company has unveiled Inmarsat ELERA to serve as a catalyst for the next wave of world-changing technologies and is ideally suited for the Internet of Things (IoT). 

In addition, the global narrowband network will also serve global mobility customers with their needs in the aviation, maritime, governments and other select enterprises.

“ELERA is perfectly suited to the needs of the connected IoT world,” said Rajeev Suri, CEO of Inmarsat. “Global reach, extraordinary resilience, faster speeds, smaller and lower cost terminals are all part of ensuring that we remain ahead of others in meeting the needs of our customers.” 

The unique capabilities of ELERA, combined with Inmarsat’s superior spectrum and the ideally suited orbital position of its satellite networks, will make it the essential catalyst for new IoT use cases, across everything from autonomous transport and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to industrial and agricultural IoT applications. 

This announcement comes following the news that the company had unveiled its plans for Inmarsat ORCHESTRA to bring together the existing geosynchronous (GEO) satellites with low earth orbit satellites (LEO) as well as terrestrial 5G into one integrated high-performance solution.  

“ELERA is a further sign of a company with true momentum and one that is delivering new innovations and strong performance,” continued Suri. “We have sharpened our strategy to focus on driving growth, accelerate decision making, launch new innovations, and are creating a more commercially focused, customer-centric culture.”

ABOUT INMARSAT

Inmarsat is the world leader in global, mobile satellite communications. It owns and operates the world’s most diverse global portfolio of mobile telecommunications satellite networks, and holds a multi-layered, global spectrum portfolio, covering L-band, Ka-band and S-band, enabling unparalleled breadth and diversity in the solutions it provides. Inmarsat’s long-established global distribution network includes not only the world’s leading channel partners but also its own strong direct retail capabilities, enabling end to end customer service assurance.

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Gen. John Hyten: DOD Considers Sensors for Missile Threat Detection No. 1 Capability
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Gen. John Hyten: DOD Considers Sensors for Missile Threat Detection No. 1 Capability

Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a two-time Wash100 Award winner, said the Department of Defense (DOD) needs sensors that can detect missile threats worldwide, DOD News reported Wednesday.

"I would like to have overhead sensors that see everything, characterize everything that goes on on this planet, from a missile perspective, all the time, everywhere. That's the one capability I would like to have because you have to be able to see it to do anything about it,” Hyten said Wednesday at a symposium.

He said the Space Development Agency (SDA) and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) are building a space layer architecture. He cited joint fires, integrated air and missile defense, joint command and control, contested logistics and information advantage as “functional battles” priorities.

Hyten told event attendees that industry should speed up efforts to address the challenges posed by Russia and China. He added that the Joint Requirements Oversight Council will hold an industry day at a classified level to discuss the urgent defense capabilities the Pentagon needs from the commercial sector.

Space Acquisition Forum

GovCon Wire, sister site of ExecutiveGov, will hold its Space Acquisition Forum on Sept. 14, featuring defense officials who will give their perspectives on military acquisition reform and modernization issues. Visit the GovCon Wire Events page to register for the virtual forum.

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Army Seeks to Advance Human-AI Synergy With Theoretical Construct; Jason Metcalfe Quoted
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Army Seeks to Advance Human-AI Synergy With Theoretical Construct; Jason Metcalfe Quoted

U.S. Army researchers have come up with a model that seeks to advance team-like partnerships between humans and artificial intelligence.

The three-dimensional construct developed by Army Combat Capabilities Development Command researchers maps out the capabilities of computational and biological intelligence and charts the capabilities along three axes: information certainty, available time and complexity of the problem, the service said Wednesday.

“The idea of capability as a key variable to compare humans and AI is a pretty unifying notion,” said Jason Metcalfe, Army research kinesiologist.

“Two critical factors that show up broadly in the science on this are the time available to execute a response and the level of certainty in the information about the task. With all that, a key element of our argument is that these discussions almost always neglect task complexity as an important factor,” he added.

Metcalfe said the task complexity factor enables the construct to provide a more accurate representation of AI and human capabilities that should be taken into consideration by engineers and scientists.

Researchers believe the theoretical construct could help developers design learning algorithms and control frameworks that could address blind spots facing humans and facilitate human support for smart technologies.

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DOE Invests in Clean Energy-Power Grid Integration
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DOE Invests in Clean Energy-Power Grid Integration

The Department of Energy has awarded $45 million to multiple projects aimed at driving the integration of clean energy sources into the U.S. power grid system. DOE said Wednesday that the grants include $25 million for the creation of a public-private consortium to pursue grid-forming inverter technologies.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Electric Power Research Institute and the University of Washington will oversee the industry-wide consortium that will explore the potential of inverter-based energy sources, such as solar power, to restart an electric grid.

GridBright and the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania will receive $6 million for two projects that will focus on designing a sensor technology to help utilities determine the amount of renewable energy that solar photovoltaic installations generate for commercial and residential purposes.

DOE added that the remaining $14 million will go toward nine projects to accelerate the commercialization of a solar heat system and other hardware that can help power the grid with clean energy resources.

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Air Force Department’s New Innovation Arm to Focus on Space Tech Development; Lt. Col. Walter McMillan Quoted
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Air Force Department’s New Innovation Arm to Focus on Space Tech Development; Lt. Col. Walter McMillan Quoted

The Department of the Air Force will formally launch a new entity on Aug. 19th under the larger AFWERX innovation group to develop on-orbit technologies for the U.S. Space Force in collaboration with small businesses and university researchers.

SpaceWERX will use existing AFWERX tools to connect space personnel and acquisition professionals with the commercial and academic sectors for development work, the Air Force Research Laboratory said Wednesday.

The department plans to hold a pitch event on the SpaceWerX kickoff day and award up to $34 million to startup companies that are pursuing Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II contracts.

AFWERX is also scheduled to start its SpacePrime initiative in late August with the goal to mature emerging technology using the Small Business Technology Transfer (SBTT) program's open topic approach.

“Space Prime is our strong signal to academia, industry, investment, interagency, and international partners on a specific mission area where we aim to energize the space industrial base and develop on-orbit capability in an accelerated timeline," said Lt. Col. Walter McMillan, director of SpaceWERX. “We are targeting operational capability in two to four years," McMillan added.

The Air Force's technology accelerator intends to release an STTR solicitation notice in the fall and expects to attract teams of small businesses and universities to the initial space technology project.

Air Force Department's New Innovation Arm to Focus on Space Tech Development; Lt. Col. Walter McMillan Quoted

GovCon Wire, sister site of ExecutiveGov, will host a virtual forum about space acquisition on Sept. 14. Visit the GovCon Wire Events page to learn more about the upcoming Space Acquisition Forum.

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