Technology

Lumen Technologies has recently won a potential 12-year, task order under the General Services Administration’s (GSA) $50 billion Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) program, to provide secure high-speed connectivity, WiFi, unified communications and managed network services to the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps. Lumen will operate on an initial one-year term with 11 additional one-year options available to continue work.

A Lockheed Martin-made spacecraft is now on its way back to Earth after a mission to explore and gather samples on the Bennu asteroid. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft carries asteroid samples as it flies back to Earth's orbit over a 1.4-billion-mile, two-year trip, which is expected to include two rotations around the Sun, Lockheed said Monday.

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.

David Egts, senior director and chief technologist of Red Hat's North American public sector, recently took part in a recent Q&A session with ExecutiveBiz to detail the ongoing importance of edge computing and its capabilities in data processing. David Egts is the senior director and chief technologist of Red Hat’s North America public sector organization. 

Virgin Orbit announced on Thursday that its LauncherOne rocket is fully assembled and will soon be shipped to Mojave Air and Space Port in California for pre-launch operations. The rocket’s upcoming mission is called Tubular Bells, Part One, which will launch CubeSat satellites for the Department of Defense (DOD) and Royal Netherlands Air Force, as well as two optical satellites for SatRevolution. The launch is scheduled for June of this year. 

Andy Beamon, vice president of strategic innovation for citizen services at Maximus' federal business arm, said intelligent virtual assistants have the potential to personalize, accelerate and streamline customer deliveries. Artificial intelligence-powered IVAs allow government agencies to accommodate inquiries and various requests of citizens 24/7 without the need for a complete staff, according to Beamon.

Amazon Web Services helped the U.S. Air Force demonstrate edge computing with the service branch's new system of situational awareness sensors. The company said Friday it participated in the On-Ramp 4 demonstration in Germany, where USAF's Advanced Battle Management System simulated performance at the edge of the battlefield.

CGI announced on Friday that its Momentum enterprise suite software as a service (SaaS) has been authorized for the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) by the Joint Authorization Board (JAB), enabling the company to work within the cloud at federal agencies. JAB granted CGI the authorization after a six-month certification process.

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.

Leidos announced on Thursday that it has been awarded a spot on potential $12.6 billion Solutions for the Information Technology Enterprise III (SITE III) contract from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The company will continue supporting DIA and compete for task orders to support the overall information technology (IT) program. SITE III runs for ten years and is a multiple-award indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract.

The U.S. Air Force has flight-tested a Kratos Defense & Security Solutions-made unmanned tactical aerial platform equipped with a new autonomy core system to assess its navigational command response and basic aviation functions. The UTAP-22 aircraft flew at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida on April 29 to exhibit safe flight performance of the Skyborg ACS while being monitored by both ground-based and airborne control stations, Air Force Research Laboratory said Wednesday.

General Atomics' electromagnetic systems business will deliver portable molecular diagnostic systems to naval medical research units and partner locations in Peru and Cambodia as part of a contract from the Naval Medical Research Center's Austere environments Consortium for Enhanced Sepsis Outcomes program.

SpaceX completed a high-altitude test flight of a Starship prototype rocket with Serial Number 15 and company CEO Elon Musk announced that the rocket landing went according to plan. The May 5 flight conducted in Boca Chica, Texas marked the first time SpaceX landed a Starship prototype without the test subjects being destroyed by explosion.

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.