Broadly, GPS refers to a satellite-based navigation system that supplies information about locations and time on Earth. It’s increasingly vulnerable to intentional attacks and other disturbances, partially due to its historic dependence on weak, unencrypted signals beamed from space. 

Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and James Lankford, R-Okla., recently introduced the GPS Resiliency Report Act to help get ahead of GPS-related hazards to America’s foundational systems and public safety.

“GPS technology plays a critical role in both our national infrastructure and our national security, and so we need to remain vigilant about the risks to GPS,” Hassan told DefenseScoop in an email on Tuesday. “This commonsense, bipartisan bill will ensure that the Department of Defense is learning from conflicts around the world, and preparing for the possibility that it cannot rely on GPS satellite technology.”

If passed, the bill would require the secretary of defense to submit a report on “the Global Positioning System and associated positioning, navigation, and timing services” within one year of enactment, according to the legislative text.

That review would be unclassified, with a classified annex if warranted.

Elements of the report would need to include descriptions of risks during a potential conflict in which the U.S. is involved — or in the case of an attack on an ally. Notably, the bill defines allies as members of the NATO alliance, non-NATO partners listed in section 644(q) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, and Taiwan.

The lawmakers also call for a full assessment of “the capabilities of competitor countries, including the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, Iran, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, to degrade or deny” U.S. GPS access.

Additionally, the report would need to cover current DOD pursuits to develop and buy assets that provide redundant global positioning and positioning, navigation, and timing capabilities — including space-based, terrestrial-based and quantum-sensing technologies. 

Defense officials would also be expected to evaluate the ability of the Space Force’s Resilient Global Positioning System (R-GPS) program to achieve full capacity to provide resilience to existing U.S. satellites, and separately, produce framework for enabling a full-scale terrestrial-based GPS redundancy system that could be operational no later than 15 years after the legislation is enacted.

“By reviewing the risks to current GPS technology, we lay the groundwork for the next generation of position, navigation, and timing systems that will keep us safe, secure, and free,” Hassan said.

Following its introduction, the bill was referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

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The technology suite, dubbed Otter, was launched Jan. 14 via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, the Navy said in a news release Friday.

The platform’s primary payload has “space-based maritime domain awareness capabilities.” The secondary payloads — an X-band transmitter and an LED on-orbit payload (LOOP) — will “help the government evaluate communication technologies and concepts of operations on future CubeSat missions,” according to the release.

The vehicle will be operated by Naval Postgraduate School faculty and students on behalf of the National Reconnaissance Office, via the Mobile CubeSat Command and Control network.

NRO is one of the United States’ premier spy agencies when it comes using satellites for intelligence purposes. President Donald Trump has nominated Troy Meink, one of the office’s senior leaders, to serve as the next secretary of the Air Force.

“The NRO is always looking for innovative ways to advance our capabilities in space,” Aaron Weiner, director of the organization’s advanced systems and technology directorate, stated in the release. “This demonstrator … showcases the value in rapidly qualifying low-cost, commercial off-the-shelf hardware.”

New Zealand’s Defence Science and Technology organization is also a partner in the project.

The Otter effort comes as the Pentagon and intelligence community are embracing the concept of putting relatively inexpensive platforms and proliferated satellite architectures into LEO to improve resiliency and reduce latency, among other benefits. For example, the Space Development Agency is working to build out a massive constellation, known as the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), for data transport and missile tracking.

“One of the things we’re excited about when you look at taking satellite communications from [geostationary orbit] all the way down to LEO and not GEO, [is] you’re able to … decrease latency, increase throughput,” Mike Dean, director for command, control and communications infrastructure in the office of the DOD Chief Information Officer, said Thursday during a panel at the Potomac Officers Club’s annual Defense R&D Summit in Northern Virginia, noting that the Pentagon is about to kick off a new study focused on non-terrestrial networks and protocols.

The Navy is also looking to improve its SATCOM and networking capabilities.

“When you look at 5G and Navy, a big part of this becomes, what’s the base component? … And for us it’s about that high data rate, high speed, large bandwidth capability. So as you start to look at those applications that we’re working on in the future, what would that be when you’re looking at the afloat? It’s that satellite communications to improve the bandwidth and connectivity to our strike groups at sea. That’s huge,” Scott St. Pierre, the service’s director for enterprise networks and cybersecurity, said during Thursday’s panel.

“Afloat [command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting], long-range fires — those are big data capabilities that we need to move data fast. We want to get it up to the satellite, down to an analysis station, [and] back up to the satellite with the results of what we’re looking at,” he added.

The Otter technology, an experimental system that’s not currently part of the PWSA, is intended to “add sensors in the space layer to be able to see what’s going on in the water,” Wenschel Lan, interim chair of the Naval Postgraduate School’s Space Systems Academic Group, stated in Friday’s release. “It’s not just a camera, but a lot of different phenomenologies that you can sense from space to then help paint the picture of what’s going on.”

The X-band transmitter “is ideal for space communications optimized for data-intensive payloads,” according to the release.

The Otter project is also envisioned as a risk-reduction effort that could smooth the way for future Pentagon satellite programs and give personnel important know-how.

“We’re spending a small amount of money to buy down the risks so that when they actually do a full program of record, they’re not going into it blind,” Lan added, noting that the initiative will also give NPS students direct experience with space missions and make them “better prepared to serve as Space professionals in the Navy, throughout the DOD, and beyond.”

Otter isn’t NRO’s and NPS’ first rodeo when it comes to collaboration on satellite projects. Last year, they launched a CubeSat called Mola that also carried an X-band transmitter and LOOP technology, according to the release.

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These extremely high-resolution pictures of precise locations in Singapore, South Africa, Spain and Brazil — as well as never-before shared images of the Pentagon from the first WorldView Legion — demonstrate what Maxar’s newest, still-growing constellation of cutting-edge satellites offer to the Defense Department and Intelligence Community in the near term.

“The first images from both WorldView Legion satellites are a major step forward for the geospatial industry,” Susanne Hake, Maxar Intelligence’s general manager for U.S. government, told DefenseScoop in an email on Thursday.

“We’re on track to triple our 30 cm imagery capacity, revisit areas of interest up to 15 times per day, and collect images from dawn-to-dusk. These advancements will give warfighters what they really need: real-time, actionable insights,” she explained.

On May 2, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched the first pair of new WorldView Legion Earth observation satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Equipped with sophisticated cameras, automated features and other innovative capabilities to collect distinct images of happenings on Earth’s surface, these next-gen platforms mark the first two in orbit of Maxar’s planned six-sat WorldView Legion fleet.

Ultimately, this fleet was designed to enable the highest electro-optical imagery resolution commercially available for DOD at the time of its development.  

The initial four images taken by the second WorldView legion satellite show sharp, clear details that the systems can pick up on — like umbrellas and vehicles seen below:   

While the company previously released its initial images from the first WorldView Legion satellite last week, on Thursday Maxar provided DefenseScoop with images of Washington taken by the system that had not yet been shared publicly.

A Maxar spokesperson said the company is currently preparing for the second launch of satellites for this next-gen fleet, and that they hope to share more details soon.

“The third and fourth WorldView Legion satellites will be Maxar’s first satellites in mid-inclination orbit (MIO), meaning they will orbit around Earth’s center rather than over its poles as the rest of Maxar’s constellation does, known as sun-synchronous orbit. This means dawn-to-dusk collection, more frequent monitoring, and better visibility in areas with morning fog — getting us closer to near real-time insights. The final two WorldView Legions will also be launched into MIO,” the spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

Notably, the realization of this new, ultra-modern constellation also comes as Maxar is moving in a strategic “new direction,” according to Hake, who recently joined the company after serving for years as an executive at Palantir.

“Maxar has been collecting high resolution imagery for many years — we have actually the largest commercial library of imagery — it’s more than 125 petabytes of data. And we collect almost 3.8 million square kilometers of imagery every day,” Hake told DefenseScoop during an interview in May. 

Once the WorldView Legion fleet of six spacecraft is all set, Maxar will be poised to collect imagery from a coverage area of more than 6 million square kilometers per day.

“But when you ask about the new direction — where Maxar is going — it’s taking all the imagery we’re collecting and also helping to build more [software and analytics] products and solutions out of it,” Hake explained, pointing to the company’s expanding 3D mapping and simulation-enabling capabilities.

“I think the future direction of the company is more about knowing that just providing imagery is honestly not enough for our users, right? They need to have insights and information surfaced out of that imagery, so they can actually make decisions faster,” she told DefenseScoop.

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Under the $25.5 million other transaction authority agreement, Astroscale will deliver a “servicing vehicle prototype” by 2026 that “leverages a refueling technology advanced by previous industry/Government partnerships, delivering fuel to client vehicles, and permitting them to remain on-station and on-mission,” per the announcement.

Space Systems’s Command’s (SSC) assured access to space directorate is managing the contract with the Space Development Corps’ Space Enterprise Consortium, an office focused on connecting space startups with OTA opportunities at the Pentagon.

The contract comes as U.S. Space Command continues to send the demand signal to the Space Force and other government agencies about its need for more maneuverable satellites. The command wants to shift towards “dynamic space operations” — the ability to easily, continuously and quickly maneuver satellites in-orbit over long periods of time and distance.

“What we’re trying to articulate as a requirement to Space Force is, we need to be able to have sustained space maneuver for those platforms that we deem are the kind that need to be dynamic, as opposed to positional,” Spacecom Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. John Shaw said in July during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute.

Due to a finite amount of fuel, current satellites are constrained in their designs and have limited mobility once they are launched. Without a way to refuel in orbit, satellites and their launch vehicles are limited in size, weight and cost, a Space Force release noted. An inability to refuel also forces mission planners and operators to move spacecraft in a manner that does not waste their fuel or shorten their lifespans — thereby restricting their full range of capability.

Spacecom has set a deadline to have more maneuverable satellites in orbit by 2028, with plans to conduct a demonstration by 2026.

SSC did not immediately respond to DefenseScoop about whether the prototype that will be delivered by Astroscale will play a role in the upcoming demonstration. 

“The Space Force is ready to respond to the unquestionable need identified by our warfighters and industry is enthusiastic to help us address the challenges of the new space age we find ourselves in,” Col. Joyce Bulson, program manager for the Space Force’s space mobility and logistics capabilities, said in a statement. “I’m excited for the opportunities to both rise to the challenges set forth by our warfighters and advance our nation’s space capabilities.”

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The project has been designated a Vanguard program, making it a top science and technology priority for AFRL aimed at delivering game-changing capabilities for the U.S. military.

The Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3) initiative comes at a time when GPS satellites, which the U.S. military, private sector and the average citizen depend on, are at risk of being jammed.

“We’re really excited to push the state of the art with over 100 experiments on this little [NTS-3] spacecraft and we’re looking at ways that we can solve warfighters’ problems in the contested environment,” Maj. Gen. Heather Pringle, commander of AFRL, told reporters at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.

She continued: “We know that the way of warfare has changed and we’re going to be having difficulties with, you know, jamming and have difficulties getting our position, navigation and timing signals to our warfighters. So, the way that we can look at new ways of addressing that on this satellite is really exciting for us whether it’s spot beaming or timing and navigation and all the antennas.”

The spacecraft, which is expected to remain in orbit for about a year, is slated to be incorporated into the Space Force’s USSF 106 launch mission, which is currently scheduled for late 2023, according to Pringle.

The NTS-3 experiments will involve not just the satellite but also ground equipment and terminals such as command and control stations and software-defined radios.

GPS satellites typically fly in medium-Earth orbit (MEO), but NTS-3 will be put into geostationary orbit (GEO) over the United States.

“What we can do with NTS-3 being in GEO is look at how can you use a constellation that is truly a hybrid architecture,” said Joanna Hinks, the deputy program manager. “You could use signals that are coming from both the traditional [spacecraft], the MEO satellites … as well as satellites that you could put in GEO and, you know, get the benefits there and really broadcast something that’s complementary.”

One of the benefits of GEO systems is they remain persistently in view of the same area of the Earth, she noted.

“You don’t need to worry about … you’ve only got one or two satellites and they’re going to be gone in a few hours [and] you won’t be able to see them. That’s one of the big things,” she said.

The Air Force Research Lab hopes to start laying the groundwork for how satellite users could have a constellation that is not limited to one orbit regime.

The concept that Hinks described is known as augmentation.

“People have looked at it over the years a little bit and we’re trying to take it to the next step,” she said.

Reprogrammable signals will be another major emphasis for the experiments.

AFRL wants to examine “what are some specific signals that we could broadcast with this capability. And also, you know, what does re-programmability look like?” Hinks said.

User equipment must be able to handle it, she noted.

The experiments will look at: “How do you tell your user equipment that you’re going to be broadcasting something new so that it can be ready to receive that?” she said. “And on the ground side … if we’re looking at the ability to be reprogrammable, the ground segment needs to be able to command that. So, we’re doing some experiments with our ground segments to understand what that looks like.”

Timekeeping will be another focus of the experimentation.

“We’re looking at doing automated anomaly detection and mitigation on-orbit, which just increases the resiliency so that we don’t have outages and our operators on the ground don’t have to deal with it if there’s an anomaly” with the clocks, she said.

Harris Corp. will integrate the NTS-3 using Northrop Grumman’s ESPAStar bus, and Parsons Corp. has developed a dedicated ground system for the experiments, according to AFRL.

Payload-to-bus integration is being completed now.

“Then we’ll be doing testing of the integrated system this summer. And then, at the same time, start to do a lot more of that risk reduction in terms of trying out our experiments … in a limited fashion on the ground, get initial baseline data and be ready for primetime next year,” Hinks said.

Program executive officers will be observing the results of the experiments.

Cordell DeLaPena, program executive officer for military communications and PNT at Space Systems Command, said integration studies will look at how acquisition officials can insert capabilities coming out of the demonstration into the ongoing production of satcom systems.

“The acquirers are here to think about and learn how they could incorporate this technology into their own programs,” Pringle said. “We want our PEOs with us at every step of the way so that they know where it does work and where it doesn’t.”

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