News

The SpaceX-built Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying four astronauts from NASA and foreign space agencies was launched Friday using the company's Falcon 9 rocket for a six-month scientific research mission on the International Space Station. NASA said Friday Falcon 9 lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has found during a study that a satellite time and location service developed by Satelles could serve as a source of timing data, even in deep indoor places that global navigation satellite systems cannot reach. NIST presented data from its performance review of Satelles' STL offering at the Workshop on Synchronization and Timing Systems hosted by the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions.

The U.S. Air Force has selected Intelligent Artifacts to study and develop certifiable machine learning technology designed for airborne use. The New York-based company said Thursday it will work on the Blue Sky project under a phase one contract with USAF's Small Business Innovation Research program.

Amazon Web Services has recognized ManTech International for the latter's performance in cloud migration and the DevOps approach, which combines software development and information technology operations to lessen systems development life cycle. ManTech said Thursday it was awarded the AWS Migration and DevOps Competencies by demonstrating best practices that help government agencies deploy AWS.

The U.S. Army selected six companies for an eight-week sprint to design power technology concepts for the military branch's future electric vehicles. Each participant will aim to develop an electric power system for potential use in remote areas as part of the Army's Power Transfer Cohort initiative.

Michael Lanzaro, who was the chief technology officer of DrawDown Detection, has been promoted to serve as president and CTO of Liberty Defense Holdings following the its merger with the former company. Lanzaro will oversee efforts to further develop and certify Liberty Defense's portfolio of security-focused detection technologies, the company said Thursday.

Perspecta’s applied research arm has received a potential 45-month, $18.5 million contract to develop a platform for long-range tactical radio communications under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program. Perspecta Labs will build, prototype and test an adaptive distributed array system that works with unmodified tactical waveforms and existing tactical radios as part of DARPA’s Resilient Networked Distributed Mosaic Communications program.

The U.S. Air Force performed flights of the General Atomics-built MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft equipped with the Reaper Defense Electronic Support System and a digital recorder in Europe through remote split operations. RDESS is an electronic support measure payload that provides MQ-9 with electronic sensing capability by gathering and geolocating signals of interest from standoff ranges, while the digital recorder collects multispectral targeting pod data to further develop machine learning and artificial intelligence applications.

Ace Info Solutions has received a potential $37 million task order to help the U.S. Forest Service's natural resource manager directorate sustain agency information technology tools and applications. The Dovel Technologies subsidiary said Thursday it will perform operation and maintenance work on more than 70 systems that support agency business processes under the five-year task, as part of the Department of Agriculture IT Support blanket purchase agreement.

Gabe Camarillo, senior vice president of the Army Business Unit for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), recently spoke with ExecutiveBiz regarding SAIC’s reorganization of the business unit, the advancing capabilities and modernization initiatives for the service branch, recent contracts to expand the company’s HWIL, engineering and support services as well as SAIC’s establishment in the Huntsville market and goals for the rest of 2021. 

This week, first-time Wash100 inductee Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ascended to the top spot in the Popular Vote for the most influential executives in the government, industry and academia that are shaping the GovCon community in 2021. Visit the Wash100 website to see the current Top 30 voting results and vote for your favorite executive leaders by April 30.

VSE announced Tuesday that it secured approximately $37.5 million in combined new contract awards from the U.S. Air Force and a U.S. government foreign ally. The maintenance and repair work under both contracts is expected to begin during the second quarter of the year.

The White House plans to nominate Ely Ratner as assistant secretary for Indo-Pacific security affairs at the Department of Defense and 2021 Wash100 Award recipient Stacey Dixon as principal deputy director at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Ratner is a special assistant to the secretary of defense and director of DOD’s China Task Force while Dixon serves as deputy director at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

Google, Microsoft and Amazon released cloud computing tools to help state and local health agencies accelerate the vaccination signup process as COVID-19 vaccines become available to almost everyone in the U.S, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

A Raytheon Technologies business is developing a next generation decoy technology to provide F/A-18 Super Hornet aircraft with added protection against enemy missiles. Raytheon Intelligence and Space has designed the Dual-Band Decoy to attract hostile missiles by sending out signals that cover a wider range of bands in the electromagnetic spectrum, the company said Wednesday.