Defense, intelligence and even civilian agencies are looking to the skies. For government contractors, the space domain is bursting with opportunity.
As senior vice president of SAIC’s space business unit, David Ray is at the cutting edge. We asked him to talk us through the emerging space industry and describe SAIC’s go-forward strategy there.
What are the issues and challenges percolating in the space domain?
The space domain is becoming a very complex place. How do you drive speed in the architectures and solutions that you’re delivering? Assets are getting smaller, and the ability to leverage those assets to do multiple missions is going to be very different in the future. As we look to make things multimission, how do you build that architecture?
There’s also so much clutter in space, so many things out there. You need domain awareness, being able to understand what’s around you, how fast it’s moving. You have to have a handle on all of the things.
How does your new data platform EQADR help?
It’s a cross-domain solution that allows users to talk across security platforms: unclassified, secret and maybe higher classification levels. That ensure’s the information gets to the right place.
In space domain awareness, when you talk about space junk, there are things out there that are commercial, there’s federal civil things, NASA items and things that are classified. We have to understand where all of that is so that we can make informed decisions. Being able to access that information is absolutely key.
You recently announced a partnership with GOMSpace. What’s the intention there?
GOMSpace is a unique provider of CubeSats, dorm-room-refrigerator-sized satellites ⏤ and even smaller ones ⏤ that increasingly have the ability to do things that in the past could only be done by medium-sized SATs or small SATs.
In our mission around space integration, we’re trying to provide a multimission spacecraft at affordable prices, to deliver new capabilities. With GOMSpace satellite components in that small realm, we can provide innovative solutions at an integrator level, delivering tremendous capabilities that our customers are going to need in the future. We’re taking the hardware from others and integrating it with software-defined solutions, to drive the value-added piece of those new solutions.
SAIC also does mission assurance and is working on the space-junk problem. Say a bit about your efforts there?
Working with NASA at Johnson Space Center, we provide all the safety and mission assurance work that goes on into human space flight. On the Artemis mission that just launched, we were partnered side by side with the customer to ensure that the engineering was done responsibly, that it met all the safety requirements. Because once you launch, it’s not like you can bring it back in the shop.
On space junk, Space-Track.org is a contract we have with Space Force. We have the software and system capability to identify and tag objects in space: We create this registry so that people know where things are, how fast they’re moving. It’s the first step in being able to solve the problem of space domain awareness.
Where do you see opportunity for growth in the space domain?
We’re finding commercial opportunities where we can help other commercial companies make sure that when they’re launching something, it has the same rigor as a government customer would have.
As a pure agnostic system integrator, we just won the Battle Management Command, Control and Communications job with the Space Development Agency. We’re building an application factory: When satellite providers or ground-station providers build mission-unique applications, the factory will test them, rig them out and then deploy them. We’re the center of gravity for delivering that capability.
We’re also looking at how we take SpaceTrack.org, and more partnerships we’d like to develop in the future, and really start to help the Department of Commerce to manage space debris and drive space domain awareness. And we’re looking to push the boundaries on how you can leverage small assets to be able to do greater missions.
What’s the biggest business challenge you face, and how are you addressing that?
One of the challenges is speed. Customers still buy platforms, and we want to talk about how we integrate across multiple platforms. That requires an acquisition strategy that allows you to acquire that capability.
We’re leveraging our lead integration role, or design agent role, to help them define what that agnostic system integrator would be for them, how they would contract for it and how that’s different than procuring via a platform. We’re changing the narrative around how they can acquire.
On a personal note, what makes this work interesting or meaningful for you?
It’s the possibilities. When you see what people are doing in commercial space travel and the things you can do now with respect to capabilities, both in the Defense Department and in the federal civilian world, it’s really exciting. Space is the most exciting place in our aerospace and defense business, in my opinion. There’s no other place to be right now.