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The House Appropriations Committee cut the Space Development Agency personnel funding request to $26,800,000 and cut the prototyping technology request to $35,000,000 while fully funding the $20,000,000 request for research and development.
The Space Development Agency intends to work with multiple contractors and will not rely on a single vendor to build out a single layer.
The Space Development Agency released a Request for Information on 2019-07-01 that generated 150 responses from industry.
The Space Development Agency plans to buy satellite buses directly from commercial vendors or use buses that DARPA is acquiring for the Blackjack program.
The Space Development Agency’s transport layer is defined as a mesh network of satellites in low Earth orbit intended to provide global communications.
The Pentagon’s 2020 budget request included nearly $150,000,000 to grow the Space Development Agency to approximately 100 engineers, scientists, and support contractors by the following year.
Senate appropriators approved $149,700,000 for the Space Development Agency while House appropriators approved $81,800,000 for the agency.
The Space Development Agency operated with a skeleton crew of 27 civilian government workers and staff contractors led by acting director Derek Tournear.
The Space Development Agency considered deploying the tracking layer at altitudes of 1,000 to 1,500 km instead of 400 to 500 km to provide global coverage with fewer satellites.
The Space Development Agency considered deploying two satellites in highly elliptical orbits to monitor cislunar space for the deterrence layer.
The Senate Appropriations Committee voted to approve a 2020 budget for the Space Development Agency that included $44,700,000 for personnel, $20,000,000 for space research and development, and $85,000,000 for space technology prototyping.
The Space Development Agency plans to procure hundreds of satellites and discussed building one satellite per week in production for many years into the future.
Derek Tournear was named acting director of the Space Development Agency on 2019-06-24.
The Space Development Agency projected the deterrence layer would have a limited capability by 2026 or 2028.
The Space Development Agency planned to test the transport and tracking layers over the next two years and enter production in 2022 with a goal of an operational system by 2024.
The Space Development Agency plans to purchase ground systems from commercial providers and likely lease time on commercial ground stations for demonstrations.
The Senate appropriators funded the Pentagon’s full request for the Space Development Agency by approving $44,700,000 for SDA staff in the Defense Wide Operations and Maintenance account.
The House Appropriations Committee cut the Space Development Agency Operations and Maintenance funding to $26,800,000.
The subcommittee’s position on providing funding for the Space Development Agency remains unclear, while the Department of Defense requested $105,000,000 for SDA to develop a next-generation space architecture and $44,800,000 for SDA operating costs.
In March, the Department of Defense established the Space Development Agency to help design a new space architecture that takes advantage of commercial technology.