The Space Development Agency has published a request for information on the second tranche of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture’s tracking layer that will support missile defense missions.

A notice posted Monday on SAM.gov states that the Tranche 2 Tracking Layer architecture will provide global surveillance and targeting services from the low-Earth orbit and enable continuous missile warning and tracking capabilities.

The T2 Tracking Layer will also deliver a missile defense fire control capability expected to deploy to LEO in fiscal year 2027.

SDA is seeking industry input on constellation architecture, mission data processing parameters and infrared mission payload development.

L3Harris Technologies and Northrop Grumman secured prototyping agreements worth $1.3 billion in July 2022 to build and deploy 28 satellites for the T1 Tracking Layer.

Each spacecraft will include an infrared mission payload, optical communications terminals, a Ka-band communications payload and multiple pointing modes.

In late January, SDA renamed the National Defense Space Architecture as the PWSA to better reflect its mission to provide space-based warfighting capabilities.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is spearheading the development of a new positioning and navigation system designed to support NASA’s lunar exploration missions.

The Lunar Reference System will serve as a framework that will power a transmission system being built by NASA and partners to achieve accurate navigation on the moon similar to the earthbound Global Positioning System, NGA said.

Trevor Garner, senior GEOINT officer for space in NGA’s Office of Geomatics, said the effort aims to enable astronauts to navigate safely on the lunar surface as there is no existing GPS on the moon.

NGA is working with NASA, the U.S. Space Force, the U.S. Geological Survey and other agencies and universities on the LRS program.

According to Garner, the team expects to complete the new system within the next decade.

Kathleen Hicks, deputy secretary of the Department of Defense, said the Biden administration’s proposed fiscal year 2024 defense budget of $842 billion would allocate $33.3 billion for the development of a resilient space architecture and improvement of space command and control capabilities, DOD reported Monday.

Hicks, a 2023 Wash100 awardee, told attendees during a press briefing Monday that such capabilities seek to ensure the safety of space from civilian, military and commercial operations.

“This the largest DOD space budget ever. It funds diverse constellations for both sensing and communications, while also leveraging America’s world-leading commercial space sector,” she said.

The deputy DOD secretary said the proposed defense budget includes $67.4 billion for cybersecurity, information technology and electronic warfare capabilities, $30.6 billion for munitions and $1.4 billion for the Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept to help the department maintain its decision and information advantage.

Hicks was joined by Navy Adm. Christopher Grady, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during the briefing.

Satellite service provider Intelsat has concluded the assessment of an operational and data collection system for a novel space-based instrument.

Designed to observe significant air pollutants across North America, the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollutions UV-visible spectrometer will be operated by Intelsat for NASA and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the company announced from its McLean, Virginia headquarters on Tuesday.

“Working closely with our partners, we successfully completed a rigorous schedule of tests to ensure that commanding, telemetry, and mission data are flowing accurately and at near real-time speed from the IS-40e satellite through the Intelsat ground system to the Smithsonian and NASA scientists,” said Jean-Luc Froeliger, senior vice president of space systems at Intelsat.

He stressed the importance of the organization’s communications and ground system in successfully conducting the TEMPO mission, which is planned to commence this summer.

Hosted on the Intelsat 40e satellite, TEMPO will conduct hourly, high-resolution scans of the North American continent during daylight times. The instrument is intended to create a new dataset of atmospheric chemistry measurements to support scientific studies focused on topics such as rush-hour pollution and the movement of emissions from forest fires and volcanoes.

Later, scientists may be able to utilize TEMPO data when creating air quality alerts for people in high-pollution areas and for those with health issues.

To control TEMPO’s scanning locations and times, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s team of scientists will issue commands using Intelsat-developed software tailored specifically for the instrument. Once raw data is recorded, it will be sent to Intelsat’s Riverside, California ground station and made accessible to SAO scientists for analysis.

TEMPO will be positioned at 91 West in geostationary orbit at approximately 22,000 miles above Earth’s equator, a location which will allow it to monitor daily fluctuations in ozone, nitrogen dioxide and other air pollutants spanning the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Mexico City and the Yucatan Peninsula to the Canadian oil sands.

The instrument will also be included in a virtual constellation of air pollution monitors expected to provide global scientists with an all-encompassing view of air quality in the northern hemisphere.

Already in the constellation is South Korea’s Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer, which was launched on the Korean Aerospace Research Institute GEO-KOMPSAT-2B satellite. The final addition will be the European Space Agency Sentinel-4 satellite, which will take measurements of Europe and North Africa.