Capella Space wins $49 million contract for military communications satellite demo

WASHINGTON — The Space Development Agency awarded a contract worth up to $49 million to Capella Space to build two satellites for a demonstration of space-based military communications, the agency said.

The effort is aimed at showing that satellites in low Earth orbit can support military-grade communications links that remain reliable under interference or jamming. A waveform refers to how information is encoded onto a radio signal, while beamforming allows satellites to direct signals toward specific users rather than broadcasting broadly.

The firm-fixed-price agreement was issued under SDA's Hybrid Acquisition for Proliferated Low Earth Orbit, or HALO, an Other Transaction contracting mechanism used to fund rapid, on-orbit experiments. Capella, a California-based operator of a commercial radar imaging constellation and a subsidiary of IonQ, will design and develop two spacecraft equipped with specialized radio frequency payloads.