Advanced Space awarded contract to deliver AFRL's mission to the Moon

Advanced Space LLC., a leading space tech solutions company, announced that the Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) Space Vehicles Directorate, as part of a collaborative effort with AFRL's Transformational Capabilities Office, has awarded the company a $72 million contract to deliver AFRL's Oracle spacecraft program, previously called the Cislunar Highway Patrol System, or CHPS.

Oracle will demonstrate space situational awareness, object detection and tracking in the regions around the Moon. Advanced Space is the prime contractor for Oracle, and is designing the mission approach, along with advanced navigation, tracking, and communication solutions for this challenging mission.

"As a company with a spacecraft at the Moon today, we place significant importance on furthering safe and transparent operations in cislunar space," said Bradley Cheetham, Chief Executive Officer of Advanced Space. "Advanced Space is proud to be selected by AFRL for this critical mission. We are leading a world class team in this effort anchored by General Atomics, the spacecraft bus and payload integrator, and Leidos, the provider of the optical payload for this mission."

The proposed mission team pulls from extensive and uniquely relevant experience to support AFRL's Oracle mission. Advanced Space owns the CAPSTONE spacecraft which is currently operating at the Moon as a pathfinding mission for NASA. General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) is providing their GA-500 class of satellite, which will be leveraged for Oracle, to the U.S. Space Force for the EO/IR Weather System (EWS).

Leidos has a long history of delivering high performance space sensor optical payloads for AFRL and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), among others. Together, this team will lead the development and deployment of the Oracle program to support AFRL mission objectives.

This award has been made through the Space Enterprise Consortium (SpEC), managed by National Security Technology Accelerator (NSTXL), using their Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) authority. This procurement vehicle increases the government's ability to capitalize on innovative and non-traditional solutions to challenging and time-sensitive problems.