NTS-3 will carry a fully reprogrammable, 100 percent digital payload using a direct-to-L-band direct digital synthesis approach.
AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate awarded an $80,400,000 contract for NTS-3 to Harris Corporation in December.
NTS-3 is intended to demonstrate how an additional geostationary layer of PNT satellites could augment the medium Earth orbit GPS constellation.
The ESPAStar bus being built for NTS-3 has a four-panel deployable solar array instead of the three-panel array used for EAGLE.
AFRL awarded Braxton Technologies a Small Business Innovation Research contract in 2017 to develop the ground system for NTS-3.
Harris Corporation, based in Melbourne, Florida, is the prime contractor to build NTS-3 using a Northrop Grumman ESPAStar bus.