HUNTSVILLE – U.S. Senator Richard Shelby (R-Tuscaloosa) was instrumental in securing FY22 funding to help the Space Development Agency locate operations and integration centers at Redstone Arsenal and at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota.
SDA plans to also revitalize a current 8,400 sq. ft. facility on Redstone at a cost of roughly $4-5 million.
Operational work will be performed at SDA’s Networking and Operations Centers, located at Redstone Arsenal and at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota.
As a prologue, the SDA, which is transitioning into the U.S. Space Force, awarded a $324.5 million contract to General Dynamics Mission Systems (GDMS) in May to operate the ground systems and manage network operations of the SDA’s low Earth orbit constellation.
Redstone Arsenal will be one of two operational centers for a future ground Operations and Integration (O&I) segment of the National Defense Space Architecture.
The center will be used to operate SDA’s constellation of satellites, known as the National Defense Space Architecture (NDSA), which provide high speed tactical data transport and support resilient missile warning and missile tracking as part of the Department’s pivot to a multi-orbit, resilient missile warning, missile tracking, and missile defense architecture.
SDA’s sites were chosen intentionally to be not only separate from other space operations activities but to align directly with the end user organizations.
Redstone end users include the Missile Defense Agency, US Army Space and Missile Defense Command, APNT/S CFT and possibly USSPACECOM.
General Dynamics teamed with Iridium Communications, KSAT, Emergent and Raytheon on the contract, which is broad.
The Space Development Agency was created to accelerate delivery of needed space-based capabilities to the joint warfighter through development, fielding, and operation of a constellation of hundreds of satellites primarily in low-Earth orbit called the National Defense Space Architecture.
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