A space-based data layer will get a family of ultra-compact radio-frequency terminals from BAE Systems, designed and demonstrated under a US Space Force contract, the company announced this week. Holding a link from low Earth orbit out to geosynchronous orbit is what the terminals are meant to do.
Space Systems Command went with a design derived from space-hardened, software-defined radios that BAE already builds. Traffic is intended to keep moving through jamming, electromagnetic interference and the steady radiation bath of the orbital environment, the company says.
The award lands as jamming of satellite links has become routine in conflicts from Ukraine to the Middle East. Resilient terminals sit at the seam between the spacecraft bus and the ground segment, where one failed link can take a mission offline.
What the terminals bring
Military-grade encryption will ride on the system, which will also go through space-characterization testing. Precise pointing between payloads will be supported by an application programming interface, something required for cross-link traffic in a mesh of relay satellites.
Fielding and demonstrating the hardware alongside government partners is what BAE said it will do, and scalable production is being prepared for. Joe Dziezynski, the company’s Space Systems product line director, cast the win as an extension of decades of radiation-hardened work running from Apollo-era programs to deep-space and airborne missions.
What is still unknown
What the contract is worth went unstated, and so did the number of terminals to be built. Testing and demonstration schedules were likewise absent from the announcement.
For watchers tracking the Space Force’s push to make orbital links survivable, that silence matters. Whether this is a demonstration project or the first tranche of a fielded constellation is hard to tell without a quantity or schedule.
