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LeoLabs Awarded Contract From the US Department of Commerce to Support Space Traffic Management Prototype

Sept. 9, 2022

LeoLabs, Inc., announced an award to provide data and services to the US Department of Commerce to support the development of a US civil- led Space Traffic Management (STM) system. The announcement was made at the 9th session of the National Space Council in Houston, Texas.

Under this contract, LeoLabs will provide its operationally proven tracking and conjunction alert data products for a subset of Resident Space Objects (RSOs), including both real-time and archived data sets. The Department of Commerce will utilize these orbital data products to support testing and evaluation of a prototype STM system.

"We are honored to be selected by the Department of Commerce to provide high accuracy tracking and conjunction alert data products for its Space Traffic Management system," said Dan Ceperley, LeoLabs CEO and co-founder. "The traffic in LEO is growing exponentially, driven by commercial innovation and economic opportunity. Our space operations infrastructure is the only system designed to scale with that growth. LeoLabs was founded to drive innovation in Space Traffic Management, therefore we look forward to working with the US Government on this effort to ensure the continued success of the space industry."

This agreement demonstrates continued US leadership in STM and marks significant progress by the Department of Commerce towards fulfilling Space Policy Directive-3 (SPD-3), which calls for the development of a new national STM service managed by a civil government agency. This contract was issued as a sole-source award, providing the Department of Commerce access to LeoLabs space safety services which are currently utilized for over 60% of operational satellites in LEO.