Airbus Defence and Space (Airbus DS) has been awarded a US$50 million contract to host US Air Force secondary communications payloads on satellites built by the firm. The award under an indefinite-delivery, indefinite quantity basis supervised by the US Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center was made to allow Airbus DS to research the area in order to bid for specific contracts until 2029.
In July, Airbus DS, under its former Astrium Services Government subsidiary, had been selected as one of 12 organisations deemed fit to bid for contracts under the Hosted Payloads Solutions (HOPS) programme run by the US Air Force.
