Capella Selected for Next Space Development Agency Prototype

San Francisco-based Capella, an IonQ company that specializes in advanced synthetic-aperture radar satellites, will demonstrate, for the military, advanced tactical waveform performance, adaptive beamforming and secure tactical communications in low Earth orbit (LEO), the Space Development Agency (SDA) announced Tuesday. 

Capella will perform the work under an SDA prototype agreement for the Hybrid Acquisition for Proliferated Low Earth Orbit, or HALO, effort. The demonstration is part of the HALO Europa Track 1 solicitation. The award is a firm-fixed price, other-transaction agreement, with a total potential value of $48.9 million, the SDA reported in a news release. 

Capella will design and develop two space vehicles with advanced radio frequency payloads, mission-specific waveforms and secure ground-to-space integration systems to enable robust, end-to-end communications capabilities.

The demonstrations are expected to be completed by November 2027.

“With this award under Europa Track 1, we are working with a HALO pool member to build space vehicles dedicated to this demonstration; whereas, Track 2 allows us to use existing commercial constellations to conduct demonstrations for SDA alongside their primary functions,” said GP Sandhoo, acting director of the SDA. “This flexibility is a cornerstone of the HALO program, through which we are rapidly delivering new capabilities to the warfighter and growing our industrial base to enhance resilience.”

The SDA noted that this was the second prototype agreement awarded to a member of the so-called HALO pool. In February, the SDA selected Midland, Texas-based AST SpaceMobile, under a $30 million prototype agreement to demonstrate tactical satellite communications.

The original 19 companies SDA selected in October 2024 to be members of the HALO acquisition approach include: 

• Airbus U.S. Space & Defense, Arlington, Virginia
• Apex Technology Inc., Culver City, California
• AST Space Mobile USA LLC, Midland, Texas
• Astro Digital U.S. Inc., San Jose, California
• Capella Space Corp., San Francisco
• CesiumAstro Inc., Austin, Texas
• Firefly Aerospace Inc., Cedar Park, Texas
• Geneva Technologies Inc., Monument, Colorado
• Impulse Space Inc., Redondo Beach, California
• Kepler Communications U.S. Inc., Wilmington, Delaware
• Kuiper Government Solutions (KGS) LLC, Arlington, Virginia
• LeoStella LLC, Tukwila, Washington
• Momentus Space, San Jose, California
• Muon Space Inc., Mountain View, California
• NovaWurks Inc., Los Alamitos, California
• Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), Hawthorne, California
• Turion Space Corp., Irvine, California
• Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems Inc., Irvine, California
• York Space Systems LLC, Denver

The SDA did not specify when the next HALO award may occur. The agency would select a company or solution from the existing HALO pool members. The SDA may at some point increase the pool of performers capable of bidding on future SDA programs, the agency indicated.