According to recent news, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected 11 teams to work on the first phase of its Space-Based Adaptive Communication Node Program (Space-BACN). The project aims to create a low-cost, reconfigurable optical communications terminal that adapts to most optical inter-satellite link standards to convert between different satellite constellations.
The Space-BACN project will create a network of satellites in low-Earth orbit, enabling seamless communication between military, government and commercial/civilian satellite constellations that are currently inaccessible.
The agency selected teams from academia and businesses of various sizes, several of which are contracting DARPA for the first time.
Greg Kuperman, Space-BACN program manager at DARPA's Strategic Technology Office, said: "We intended to keep the Space-BACN proposal as simple as possible as we wanted to leverage both existing defence companies and a large number of innovative, Small tech companies, many of which don't have the time or resources to figure out the complex government contracting process.”
Phase 1 of the 14-month Space-BACN program follows the 15-week Phase 0, which focuses on developing the terminal's architectural design. It will then enter a 20-month Phase 2, which is aimed at building prototype versions of future products.
The first technical area selected by DARPA was to develop a flexible, small-size, lightweight, low-power, and low-cost optical aperture that could be coupled into single-mode fibers. Companies selected for the mission are CACI International Defence, MBRYONICS, and Mynaric, the latter of which is involved in Phase 0 of Space-BACN.
The goal of the second technology area is to develop a reconfigurable optical modem that supports transmission rates up to 100 Gbit/s on a single wavelength. The project's selections are II-VI Aerospace and Defense, Arizona State University, and Intel Federal.
It is reported that Arizona State University's Wireless Information Systems and Computing Architecture Center (WISCA) has been awarded 5.4 million US dollars to develop the reconfigurable modem. WISCA will use its processor technology to develop a modem capable of switching between standards after system setup and startup and to implement and implement new standards.
The third technical area will identify the key command and control elements required to support communications across optical inter-satellite links across constellations and develop the modes needed to interface between Space-BACN and commercial partner constellations. For projects in this area, DARPA has selected SpaceX, Telesat, SpaceLink, Viasat and Kuiper Government Solutions.
The first phase of Space-BACN will take 14 months from the point of view of the key milestones of the progress, and will complete the preliminary design review of the first two technology areas, as well as the fully defined interface between the system components. And the third technology area will develop cross-constellation command and control models and will demonstrate connectivity in a simulated environment to test the model for baseline scenarios.
Following the completion of the first phase, selected players from the first two technology areas will participate in the 18-month second phase to develop an engineering design unit for the optical terminal assembly. Players in the third technology area will continue to refine the scenarios to function in more challenging and dynamic scenarios.
Ultimately, the Space-BACN project will standardize communications between a growing number of satellites. The ultimate goal, according to DARPA, is to create an "internet" of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites that would allow civilian, government and military satellites to easily communicate with each other.
