All verified mentions of this organization in source documents.
With funding from DARPA and the Air Force, the Blackjack program will develop and demonstrate technical elements for a global high-speed network platform in low Earth orbit to enable highly networked, resilient, and persistent Department of Defense payloads.
DARPA plans to award multiple contracts under the Blackjack program.
DARPA’s 2018-05-25 Broad Agency Announcement specifies that each Blackjack spacecraft’s combined bus, payload, and launch should cost less than $6,000,000.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Blue Canyon Technologies a $1,540,000 contract on 2018-10-12 to define bus and payload requirements for Blackjack.
Blackjack is a $117,500,000 DARPA initiative to develop and demonstrate satellites in low Earth orbit with performance comparable to current geostationary systems at a fraction of the cost.
Congress directed the Space RCO to collaborate with DARPA on the Blackjack effort.
DARPA ended the SeeMe program in 2015 and agreed to help Raytheon finish production of the first SeeMe satellite and to pay for its launch.
SeeMe originally was a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency project to build a 24-satellite constellation in low Earth orbit to provide imagery directly to soldiers on the ground.
Raytheon won a DARPA contract in 2013 to design and produce SeeMe satellites.
DARPA’s Blackjack program intends to buy small satellites from commercial vendors and equip them with military sensor payloads.
Congress added more than $100,000,000 in funding to Blackjack above DARPA’s original request.
Gwynne Shotwell indicated at DARPA’s D60 conference on 2018-09-06 that SpaceX expected to perform hops of the BFR second stage late next year.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Descartes Labs a $2,900,000 contract to integrate Descartes Labs’ geospatial analytics platform into DARPA’s geospatial cloud.
On 2018-07-26, DARPA awarded BAE Systems Information and Electronic Systems Integration of San Diego a $2,000,000 contract under the Geospatial Cloud Analytics program.
DARPA plans to test the Geospatial Cloud Analytics program’s utility for predicting regional food shortages, identifying oil fracking sites, and detecting illegal fishing.
Under the DARPA contract, teams working with DARPA will have access to the Descartes Labs Platform.
DARPA launched the Geospatial Cloud Analytics program in 2017 to help analysts gain access to and analyze optical, synthetic aperture radar, and radio frequency data.
Descartes Labs will ingest as many as 75 additional datasets from DARPA partners into its platform to support the Geospatial Cloud Analytics program.
The contract between DARPA and Descartes Labs includes a $4,200,000 option for a second phase.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is developing an experimental constellation of commercial satellite buses in low Earth orbit to serve as platforms for military sensors.