General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) announced that it has been awarded a contract by the U.S. Space Force (USSF) Space Systems Command (SSC) for Phase 2 of the Enterprise Space Terminal (EST) program. This Phase 2 contract award was issued through the Space Enterprise Consortium (SpEC) via an Other Transaction Agreement (OTA). 

The EST program is an enterprise optical communications solution to enhance mission effectiveness by providing resilient, high-capacity communication solutions for Department of Defense (DoD) space platforms operating primarily in beyond Low Earth Orbit (bLEO) regimes at crosslink ranges from 10,000 to 80,000 kilometers while maintaining the ability to operate in the LEO regime.

“GA-EMS, under a Phase 1 contract award, leveraged its extensive Optical Communication Terminal (OCT) expertise to develop a design that can be efficiently scaled to deploy a mesh network enterprise of OCTs with capabilities to transfer large volumes of data between spacecraft and ground stations distributed across a wide spectrum of operational domains,” said Scott Forney, president of GA-EMS. “We are excited to enter Phase 2 to advance our system design and begin the build and test of the OCT subsystems.”

Phase 2 will include lab demonstrations of OCT subsystems within a government-provided test bed. GA-EMS will continue design and analysis activities to optimize the system designs. Testing results and analyses will then be presented during a Critical Design Review (CDR) at the end of the Phase 2 period of performance.

“The Phase 2 CDR will help inform the decision gate toward entering Phase 3 of the program, which will call for the assembly, test, and delivery of an integrated prototype OCT system for demonstration on a government-provided test bed,” said Gregg Burgess, vice president of GA-EMS Space Systems. “We look forward to delivering a robust, producible Optical Communication Terminal for the Space Force to ensure resilient space network connectivity for future National Security Space Architectures.”

GA-EMS completed the preliminary design of the payload support system, electrical hardware, laser terminal design, optical design and subsystem, thermal control, and command and data handling under the EST Phase 1 contract awarded in 2024. As prime contractor, GA-EMS has teamed with L3Harris for the modem subsystem and Advanced Space to provide performance modelling.

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