Workers prepare MUOS 4 for its launch in August 2015. (ULA)
Lockheed Martin has developed a new onboard payload processor for the US Space Force's (USSF) Mobile User Objective System Service Life Extension (MUOS SLE) programme, which can be reprogrammed in real time while on orbit.
The MUOS SLE payload processor is a part of Lockheed Martin's phase one proposal for the satellite life extension programme, based on the company's LM2100 satellite bus. “There is still further development activity to be done” on the MUOS SLE phase one variant, and that work will continue until the end of that development phase in July 2025, said Eric Fuller, lead proposal executive for MUOS SLE at Lockheed Martin.
MUOS is an information technology (IT)-based 3G satellite communications (satcom) protocol initially designed to replace legacy ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) follow-on satcom constellations as a way to close capability gaps in space-based tactical communications stemming from the UHF capability.
The key to the MUOS ability to deliver more than a tenfold improvement in capacity, compared with the UHF, is that it adapts a wideband multiple access cellular phone network architecture, combining it with geosynchronous (GEO) satellites.
Lockheed Martin and Boeing were selected in January 2024 to develop MUOS SLE variants, with USSF awarding USD66 million to each company for phase one development work.
“That [phase one] development activity is focused on getting all of our mission applications fully spec'd out and developed to the requirement set,” Fuller told Janes .
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