L3Harris Technologies has been awarded option year four of the Maintenance Of Space Situational Awareness Integrated Capabilities (MOSSAIC) program, a $145 million contract from the US Space Force.
The contract calls for the continued modernization and sustainment of critical space infrastructure enabling the Space Force core competency of Space Domain Awareness (SDA).
In support of the US military’s space surveillance and command centers in Colorado, California and Virginia, MOSSAIC detects, tracks and identifies deep space objects to provide timely and accurate space surveillance information for military, civil and commercial users.
“Space domain awareness is rooted in data and having the right information at the right time, which is critical to warfighting operations in all domains,” said Ed Zoiss, President, Space and Airborne Systems, L3Harris. “MOSSAIC advancements will improve current detection and tracking capabilities to better understand the location and behavior of objects in space.”
A Space Force and US Space Command program, MOSSAIC upgrades will modernize space domain awareness ground systems to enable the execution of mission tasks associated with emerging threats. This will include upgrades to communications infrastructure that allows for machine-to-machine taskings to track and respond to thousands of objects in space. The L3Harris modernization initiatives will provide the Space Force with maximized awareness, which is a core tenet of its mission to ensure safety, security and sustainability across the entire space domain.
In 2022, L3Harris and industry partners completed upgrades on three systems: powerful telescopes in Maui, Hawaii; a phased array radar at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida; and a command-and-control center in Dahlgren, Virginia.
In March 2023, L3Harris completed a key communications upgrade milestone, demonstrating a modern and resilient mission communications system for SDA sensors. This achievement was reported as a 100% success rate by Space Force officials.
