AFWERX, an innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force and powered by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), serves as a facilitator, connecting the Air Force, Space Force with cutting-edge American ingenuity from small businesses and start-ups. AFWERX operates several programs like Ventures, Spark, Prime and Spacewerx to expand the defense industrial base for advanced technologies and accelerate the transition of technology. It partners with organizations like Keystone Space Collaborative and Astrobotic to create innovation hubs and drive collaboration with industry, academia, and government.
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VentureScope won a contract to establish an internal accelerator as part of AFWERX, a U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory initiative to connect government, industry, and academic innovators.
The planned permanent Keystone Space Innovation Center will serve as the headquarters for the Keystone Space Collaborative and enable AFWERX and other Department of Defense organizations to grow in the region.
AFWERX has funded over $70,000,000 to 230 companies in the Tri-State Pittsburgh region since 2017.
Under a contract awarded last year from the U.S. Air Force AFWERX program, Phase Four began working with iodine propellant.
McQ Inc. was awarded an AFWERX SBIR Phase II contract to develop a military version of the company’s McQ CONNECT® Iridium Certus® 100 satellite terminal.
The U.S. Air Force established AFWERX in 2017 to speed adoption of commercial technology for government missions.
SBIR Phase 1 awards through SpaceWERX and AFWERX provide $50,000 for studies.
AFWERX, an innovation program managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory, awards more than 1,000 Small Business Innovation Research contracts annually.
The Air Force technology accelerator AFWERX was created in 2017 to help commercialize technologies and serve national security needs.
SpaceWERX was formed in 2020 as a space-focused spinoff of AFWERX and launched the Orbital Prime program to seek commercial solutions for debris removal and other on-orbit services.
Space Micro won a Small Business Technology Transfer Phase 1 contract from AFWERX to develop an air-to-space laser communications pod.
AFWERX sponsored Agility Prime in 2020 to advance the market for electric-powered pilotless aircraft that take off and land vertically.
SpaceWERX is modeled after the Air Force’s technology incubator AFWERX, which was created in 2017 to attract small businesses and entrepreneurs in the space industry to work with the government.
In 2021, Phase Four received a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant funded by AFWERX to develop the first electrodeless iodine plasma thruster in the United States.
Orbion Space Technology received a U.S. Air Force Phase 2 Small Business Innovation Research contract through the AFWERX program to develop and demonstrate high-thrust propulsion for small satellites.
AFWERX was created by the U.S. Air Force in 2017.
Sedaro Satellite was selected for two Direct-to-Phase II AFWERX SBIR contracts totaling about $1,700,000 to add additional modules to the Sedaro Satellite platform.
The Air Force created AFWERX in 2017 to tap private sector investment and help bring nascent technologies relevant to national security to market.
Synthetaic will use its AFWERX work to demonstrate pathways to decrease the cost to develop AI models and to query and aggregate detected object occurrences across large geospatial databases.
Loft Orbital has been awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research contract by AFWERX sponsored by the U.S. Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center’s Portfolio Architect office.