Outer space

Space agency has an ambitious plan to launch ‘hundreds’ of small satellites. Can it get off the ground?

The newly established U.S. Space Development Agency has been bashed by critics — most visibly the Air Force’s top civilian — as another duplicative Defense Department organization with half-baked ideas on how to field technology more quickly.

Fred Kennedy, the newly named director of the office, pushed back on those criticisms during an April 9 presentation at Space Symposium where he unveiled the ambitious satellite architecture that he plans to put into orbit in a matter of years.

SDA’s first project is a “transport layer” of a multitude of small, inexpensive low-Earth orbit satellites that will transfer data between space and ground assets.

But that’s just the beginning, Kennedy said.

“Other layers will follow on deployment timelines of two years and perhaps even less,” he said. “We wish to emulate the smartphone and computer industry’s approach to upgrades. We are not building exquisite systems intended to last a decade or more. To the extent possible, we will be buying and building commodities which we can then replace or upgrade on short order.”