Sierra Space is becoming a member of Rocket Lab as a present or previously VC-backed house firm to land a serious satellite cope with the military.
The Space Development Agency (SDA) chosen Sierra, together with Lockheed Martin and L3Harris, to construct 54 satellites in offers collectively value $2.5 billion. The information, introduced at this time, follows information from final week that Rocket Lab landed the same contract for as much as $515 million.
The award, in addition to Rocket Lab’s, exhibits that increasingly more firms wish to take a slice of a market that till now had been the unique area of defense primes: military satellites. Most lately, Sierra closed a $290 million Series B spherical that skyrocketed its valuation to $5.3 billion.
The 54 satellites will kind a part of the SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a massive missile detection and monitoring constellation in low Earth orbit that’s being constructed and launched in “tranches.” The trio of contracts introduced at this time is for 18 satellites every in the Tranche 2 Tracking Layer: L3Harris’s award is value $919 million; Lockheed Martin, $890 million; and Sierra Space, $740 million.
“We’re pleased to welcome Sierra Space, a new entrant as a prime vendor on Team SDA, as we continue working with L3Harris and Lockheed Martin on Tranche 2,” SDA director Derek Tournear stated in an announcement. “The marketplace is responding to the demand signals for our spiral development model. The agile response across the space industry is critically important as we deliver to the warfighter this no-fail mission capability of missile warning, missile tracking, and missile defence.”
The 54 satellites will include 48 devoted to missile detection and monitoring and 6 to missile defense. All will probably be outfitted with infrared sensors, although the sensors on the six birds devoted to missile defense will probably be able to producing what the SDA calls “fire control-quality tracks,” that are delicate sufficient to information an interceptor to convey down an aggressor’s missile.
While Lockheed and L3Harris have a longtime monitor report profitable satellite manufacturing contracts with the SDA, that is the primary award of this sort for Sierra Space. The latter firm is finest recognized for its Dream Chaser spaceplane and Orbital Reef non-public house station undertaking, moderately than satellite manufacturing at scale.
The satellites are anticipated to launch no later than April 2027.