York Space Lands $615M SDA Contract for Tranche 2 Transport Layer Alpha Satellites; Derek Tournear Quoted

York Space Systems has secured a potential $615 million contract from the Space Development Agency to build 62 Alpha satellites for the second tranche of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture’s transport layer, Breaking Defense reported Friday.

SDA Director Derek Tournear said the PWSA Tranche 2 Transport Layer Alpha satellites in low Earth orbit will provide warfighters global coverage for high-speed data communications.

Tournear, a previous Wash100 awardee, told the audience at a symposium on Thursday that SDA is in talks with a second vendor to develop the other 38 Alpha satellites and hopes to sign a contract “early next week.”

In June, SDA released a solicitation for proposals to build the Alpha spacecraft variant for the PWSA T2TL program.

T2TL will be composed of 216 satellites in Alpha, Beta and Gamma variants.

In August, Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) and Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) secured $1.5 billion in prototype agreements to develop and operate 72 T2TL Beta satellites.

Tournear noted that SDA initially planned to launch 44 Gamma satellites for T2TL but is changing its approach with plans to move 24 of those satellites to the Beta configuration.

“At least we’re in negotiations with a third Beta vendor right now to do that,” he added.

York Space is building 42 satellites for the first tranche of the Transport Layer under a prototype agreement awarded by SDA in February 2022.

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