Space Force Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess visits the Space System Command’s Space Domain Awareness (SDA) Tools, Applications, and Processing (TAP) Lab facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Credit: U.S. Space Force photo by Tiana Williams
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force awarded contracts to data analytics firms Leidos and MapLarge to support what the military calls battle management and command and control — the process of understanding what is happening in orbit, deciding what it means and directing a response.
The awards, announced April 22, are the first under a new program called Kronos that develops software tools used by military and intelligence units.
The prototype awards are valued at about $1.4 million for Leidos and $500,000 for MapLarge, the Space Systems Command said.
Space operators today rely on a mix of legacy systems to process data about satellites, debris and potential threats. Those tools can be slow to integrate new data and often operate in isolation. Kronos is intended to replace that patchwork with a more unified system that brings together data from multiple sources and presents it in near real time.
