Telesat U.S. Services
Awarded DARPA Contract for Blackjack Track B
Research, Development and in-Orbit Demonstration
with Telesat LEO
October 14, 2020
Telesat U.S. Services, LLC
has been awarded a contract by DARPA (Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency) for the
development and in-orbit demonstration of
commercial low-Earth-orbit (LEO) spacecraft
buses in a LEO constellation network with robust
low-latency communications features as part of
DARPA’s Blackjack program. Following Telesat’s
initial 2018 contract for system engineering and
interface definition under the Blackjack Phase 1
program, Telesat U.S. Services will develop and
demonstrate the Blackjack Phase 2/3 Track B
technology, including in-orbit testing the
capabilities of Optical Inter-Satellite Links
(OISLs).
As part of Phase 2, Telesat
U.S. Services will deliver two spacecraft buses
to DARPA in less than one year for a “risk
reduction” flight to test OISL communications
with government payloads in orbit and to
demonstrate OISL interoperability with different
hardware. The Phase 2 base contract represents
an $18.3 million program for Telesat U.S.
Services. Subsequently, additional Telesat LEO
spacecraft may be procured to fully populate the
Blackjack constellation, which represents a
total contract value of up to $175.6 million if
all options are exercised.
“This next phase of the
Blackjack program will showcase the powerful
capabilities that commercial LEO networks bring
to a hybrid architecture for government space
communications,” said Don Brown, General
Manager, Telesat U.S. Services. “With OISLs and
advanced networking native to the Telesat LEO
constellation architecture, we are uniquely
positioned to deliver interoperable mesh
connectivity between government and commercial
constellations. We look forward to continuing
our work with DARPA to prove out the
game-changing nature of hybrid commercial-
government networks.”
The Blackjack program is a
demonstration of LEO satellites in hybrid
commercial- government constellations offering
highly resilient space systems, global
persistence, low latency communications and
rapid technology refresh. These enabling
objectives will be accomplished by leveraging
commercial space technologies including
commoditized spacecraft buses, ground
infrastructure and user segments at
unprecedented low costs. The Telesat LEO
constellation includes a number of distinctive
features that align with the Blackjack program
vision, including spacecraft buses with native
OISL capability, mesh networking, onboard
processing, and a full global network
architecture backed by global priority spectrum
allocations.