{"id":21153,"date":"2021-07-01T20:22:11","date_gmt":"2021-07-01T20:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/uncategorized\/2021\/07\/01\/the-space-development-agency-now-has-demo-satellites-on-orbit-heres-what-theyll-do\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:00:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:00:35","slug":"the-space-development-agency-now-has-demo-satellites-on-orbit-heres-what-theyll-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/space\/2021\/07\/01\/the-space-development-agency-now-has-demo-satellites-on-orbit-heres-what-theyll-do\/","title":{"rendered":"The Space Development Agency now has demo satellites on orbit. Here\u2019s what they\u2019ll do."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 The Space Development Agency has launched a handful of demonstration satellites into orbit, which will be used to test critical technologies for a new military-owned proliferated constellation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The satellites hitched a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of the Transporter-2 rideshare mission that took place June 29. That mission carried 85 satellites into orbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SDA was created in 2019 to build the National Defense Space Architecture. Unlike most of the military\u2019s satellite constellations, which are generally made up of a small number of exquisite satellites in geostationary orbit, the NDSA will be made up of a large number of small satellites operating far closer to Earth\u2019s surface, mostly in low Earth orbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SDA plans to grow the constellations in two-year tranches, starting with about 30 satellites to begin launching in 2022<\/a> and growing to hundreds of satellites by the end of the decade<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new multilayered architecture will fill a number of missions for the military, from tracking hypersonic weapons to beyond-line-of-sight targeting. The key feature to the constellation will be an on-orbit mesh network, which SDA Director Derek Tournear has called the space networking component to the Pentagon\u2019s Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The agency plans to launch the first satellites in its constellation next year. But before that happens, it plans to test some of the key technologies in a series of on-orbit experiments that went up on Transporter-2: Mandrake 2, the Laser Interconnect and Networking Communications System (LINCS), and the Prototype On-orbit Experimental Testbed (POET).<\/p>\n\n\n\t