Science Applications International Corp. will continue to provide the Defense Intelligence Agency with laboratory operations and support services under a potential $200 million indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract. “We are proud to continue our work delivering essential assessments and analysis to DIA, the Department of Defense and the intelligence community so that we are well-equipped to protect our warfighters with the necessary information to mitigate foreign threat systems,” said Michael LaRouche, president of SAIC's national security and space sector and a 2021 Wash100 Award winner.

Lockheed Martin has partnered with the U.S. Air Force to help establish a software development factory to come up with command and control and mission planning applications for U.S. Strategic Command as part of the Global Strike and Product Support contract.

Department of Defense officials are considering ending the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud computing contract amid the ongoing litigation and are assessing other options to go forward. In late April, a federal judge turned down motions by DOD and Microsoft to dismiss Amazon’s lawsuit challenging the award of the JEDI cloud contract.

Axiom Space and NASA have signed an agreement to perform the first mission of private astronauts to the International Space Station. The Axiom Mission 1 spaceflight is expected to occur no earlier than January 2022 and will take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The U.S. Postal Service has implemented an edge artificial intelligence system on the NVIDIA EGX platform to help speed up the process of identifying and tracking packages within hours instead of several days. The distributed edge AI platform, called the Edge Computing Infrastructure Program, emerged from a three-week sprint in 2019. During the sprint, a USPS data scientist and NVIDIA architects identified ways to accelerate the analysis of billions of images of packages each USPS center generates by designing deep learning models.

In-Q-Tel has made a strategic investment in Fiddler to help the Palo Alto, California-based artificial intelligence platforms developer further advance its explainable AI tool development efforts. Fiddler also announced its participation in FinRegLab’s research to assess the fairness and transparency of machine learning models.

BETA Technologies has received airworthiness approval from the U.S. Air Force for its electric vertical aircraft. The approval allows the company to begin operating its manned ALIA electric aircraft under the AFWERX Agility Prime Program that uses government resources to rapidly deploy new platforms to help broaden technology transition pathways and advance dual-use markets.

General Electric’s technology development arm will use 5G-enabled technologies to develop “smart warehouses” at two military installations that support the deployment of supplies and other resources for critical missions worldwide. GE Research's two projects worth $36 million combined are part of the Department of Defense’s $600 million 5G experimentation initiative announced in October and will take place at the Naval Base in San Diego and Marine Corps Logistics Base in Albany, Georgia.

A Raytheon Technologies business will update the baseline Block 1 of the GPS Next-Generation Operational Control System under a contract with the U.S. Space Force to facilitate the operation of GPS III Follow-On satellites. “The ground control upgrade will provide enhanced signal reliability, accuracy, integrity, advanced jam-resistant signals and effects-based operations,” said Sandy Brown, vice president of strategic systems at Raytheon Intelligence and Space.

Firefly Aerospace has raised $75 million in a round of Series A financing led by DADA Holdings and $100 million through a secondary transaction that includes the sale of holdings owned by its major investor Noosphere Ventures. Astera Institute, Canon Ball and other investors participated in the Series A round, which gives Firefly a valuation of more than $1 billion.

The Defense Innovation Unit will soon pick a contractor to provide secure cloud access platforms to facilitate collaboration between the Department of Defense and industry. DIU has been working with Zscaler, Google and McAfee on the secure cloud access management prototyping project since last year.

Preferred Systems Solutions has unveiled a new logo and brand identity and changed its name to Solerity to reflect the company’s commitment to helping customers address national security challenges using technologies, engineering principles and optimized business processes.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft carrying four astronauts returned to Earth on Sunday after a nearly six-month stay at the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Crew-1 mission. Resilience carrying NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Shannon Walker and Victor Glover and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi performed a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico at 2:56 a.m. Eastern time.

Stratolaunch performed on Thursday the second flight test of its carrier aircraft that the company plans to use to support launches of its Talon-A hypersonic testbed vehicle. The plane, which has a wingspan of 375 feet, reached an altitude of 14,000 feet during the test flight over the Mojave Desert in California that lasted for 3 hours and 14 minutes.

ManTech International and Google Cloud have agreed to team up to deliver cloud and analytics services to the U.S. federal government. “The partnership grows out of successful collaborations between ManTech and Google Cloud to accelerate government’s digital transformation,” said Matt Tait, chief operating officer of ManTech.