Rocket Lab also surfaced in August 21 reporting after being selected for two U.S. Space Force initiatives.
The company received initial contracts under the Space Data Network Consortium to demonstrate secure optical satellite communications and was added to the NITE-STAR contract vehicle, which has a ceiling of approximately $981 million and covers spacecraft, software, ground systems and mission operations.
This isn’t strictly an autonomous-spacecraft award, but it is relevant because increasingly autonomous constellations require a supporting architecture of machine-to-machine communications, software-defined operations and resilient crosslink networks.
