NRO taps 3 startups for innovative launch experiments

WASHINGTON — Ther National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) today announced it has awarded study contracts on innovative launch capabilities to three US-based startups: Cognitive Space, Impulse Space and Starfish Space.

The contracts come under the spy satellite agency’s Broad Agency Announcements (BAA) for Agile Launch Innovation and Strategic Technology Advancement (BALISTA) program, which is exploring “in space mobility and maneuver, on-orbit logistics and sustainability, mission acceleration, artificial intelligence for ground operations, and spacecraft propellant particle count,” according to the NRO’s press release.

The NRO said the contracts, managed by NRO’s Office of Space Launch (OSL), are “smaller in scope” — though NRO has provided no specific value, as usual for the agency as its budget is classified — and intended to assess the potential for emerging space launch providers to provide new types of capabilities.

“This BAA helps NRO advance emerging technologies across launch, on-orbit support, and command & control,” said OSL Director Col. Eric J. Zarybnisky.

In it’s initial solicitation back in March, NRO explained that it was looking for companies that could provide a number of novel space launch services, including docking, moving between orbits, and AI to manage satellite constellations.

Houston-based Cognitive Space specializes in AI for autonomous management of space systems and satellite constellations.

Impulse Space, headquartered in Redondo Beach, Calif., provides in-space transportation services from low Earth orbit to other orbits. The company on Oct. 3 announced that it had won a  $34.5 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase III contract from the Space Force’s Space Safari in partnership with the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit office to support the next two experiments in the services next two Tactically Responsive Space program, called VICTUS SURGO and VICTUS SALO.

Both missions will use the firm’s Mira vehicle, and are aimed at demonstrating “how prepositioned capabilities can improve responsiveness to on-orbit situations, enabling the dynamic operations aspect of space domain awareness,” the company said.

Based in Tukwila, Wash., Starfish Space also has previously won a Space Force contract. On May 20, the service announced it had awarded the company a $37 million Strategic Funding Increase (STRATFI) contract to build, launch, and operate one of its Otter vehicles for a “first-of-its-kind docking mission” designed to provide two years of “augmented maneuver for National Security Space assets.” Essentially, the Space Force target satellites would use the Otter as an attached engine.