MIT Lincoln Laboratory and Space Systems Command led development of the QZSS-Hosted Payload from a concept in 2018 to hardware ready for delivery in 2023.
Japan’s Office of National Space Policy signed an agreement in 2020 with the U.S. Space Force to host two optical sensor payloads on the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) constellation.
The QZSS-Hosted Payload program has been supported by Space Systems Command since its inception in 2018 as a rapid acquisition and pacesetting partnership effort with Japan.
The new QZSS satellites that will host U.S. payloads will be in geostationary orbit.
The House directed the Department of Defense and the Space Development Agency to design prototypes of secure GPS receivers capable of receiving position, navigation, and timing signals from allied PNT systems such as Europe’s Galileo, Japan’s QZSS, and India’s NAVIC.