NASA‘s human exploration and operations mission directorate will launch a flight campaign that seeks to demonstrate guidance, navigation and control technologies designed to facilitate precision landing for space exploration missions.

NASA said Saturday it will test the Navigation Doppler Lidar and the Lander Vision System through April as part of the Co-Operative Blending of Autonomous Landing Technologies project.

Both the NDL, which offers velocity and line-of-sight range measurements, and the LVS, which provides terrain relative navigation capacity, will be integrated and flight tested on a Masten Space Systems-built rocket-powered vertical take-off and landing system called Xodiac.

COBALT launches will help demonstrate combined LVS and NDL measurement capacities as part of NASA’s efforts to develop precise soft-landing technologies for future missions.

“In this first flight campaign, we plan to successfully complete the integration, flight testing and performance analysis of the COBALT payload,” said John Carson III, project manager of COBALT.

NASA also seeks to demonstrate COBALT as an active navigation system for Xodiac through a follow-up flight campaign in the summer.

NASA’s Langley Research Center developed the NDL as an updated prototype of the former Autonomous Precision Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology used on the Morpheus vessel.

The space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory created the LVS as a camera-based navigation system designed to capture images of the terrain beneath a spacecraft and cross-examine recorded data with maps to pinpoint the vehicle’s location.

Three House Democratic lawmakers have introduced a bill that would classify election systems as critical infrastructure in an effort to protect U.S. elections from future international cyber attacks.

The Securing America’s Future Elections Act was introduced in response to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential elections, Rep. Mark Pocan’s (D-Wisconsin) office said in a release published Thursday.

The SAFE Act would require the Department of Homeland Security and the National Institute for Standards and Technology to develop cybersecurity standards for private contractors that work on U.S. election systems.

The proposed legislation would reauthorize the Election Assistance Commission for a 10-year period, direct DHS to start annual assessments of election systems in 2018 and require corresponding paper ballots for all electronic voting equipment.

The bill also aims to authorize funds to update cyber standards for voting software and related systems and ensure cybersecurity for all databases used in voter registration.

Pocan proposed the SAFE Act with Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) and Hank Johnson (D-Georgia).

Thomas Bossert, an adviser to President Donald Trump on homeland security and counterterrorism, has said the Trump administration will pursue information technology modernization projects as part of efforts to secure federal networks, Federal News Radio reported Thursday.

Meredith Somers writes Bossert said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies-hosted cybersecurity forum that the White House will release details on its strategy to modernize government IT systems in the coming weeks and months.

Bossert added that federal networks and data is a top cybersecurity priority for the Trump administration and that he believes it is the most directly controllable aspect of cybersecurity for the president.

He noted that cybersecurity will also be part of the defense and homeland security spending in Trump’s budget request.

The White House also plans to require federal agencies to report known and unmitigated risk; push for the adoption of the National Institute of Standards and Technology‘s cybersecurity framework; and hold federal agency heads accountable for enterprise network security, Somers reported.

Bossert added Trump looks to collaborate with the private sector to address botnets, the report stated.