NewSpace RFP

Satellite programs use software to command spacecraft, track objects, plan missions, move data and simulate designs before they are built. They rely on ground systems, and many spacecraft also carry their own flight software. This report maps the federal contracts behind that work, the solicitations this site has collected since July, and the job openings it tracks. Award figures are total amounts obligated on the contracts a software-related keyword search returned, as USAspending reported them on October 1, 2026; many of those contracts also pay for operations, networks, hardware and facilities, and the record does not identify the amount attributable to software.

Ground control

The largest award this search found is for the GPS Next Generation Operational Control System, OCX. Raytheon's contract, FA880710C0001, began in February 2010 and shows $4.51 billion obligated, with a current end date of November 30, 2026; a separate Block 3 follow-on contract ended August 31, 2026, with $266.9 million obligated. CACI's consolidated maintenance contract for the Air Force Satellite Control Network ran from 2016 to June 2026 with $600.8 million obligated, and the network's tracking stations are operated under a Five Rivers Analytics task order of $123.3 million that runs to 2030.

Civil agencies buy on the same scale. NASA's space communications work at Goddard runs through Peraton, $1.50 billion obligated since 2019 under contract 80GSFC19C0063. The Deep Space Network task order with the California Institute of Technology, which runs the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA, carries $1.58 billion. KBR Wyle holds Goddard's third Ground Systems and Mission Operations contract, $678.7 million since 2022. At NOAA, L3Harris's contract to develop the ground system for the GOES-R series of geostationary weather satellites reached $1.83 billion between 2009 and 2024.

Tracking: the catalog and the commercial feeds

USAspending shows two L3Harris orders tied to the Space Force's Advanced Tracking and Launch Analysis System, ATLAS: a $90.9 million order that ended in January 2025, and an active $56.3 million order, running through January 2027, to develop, integrate and deliver mission thread software within ATLAS. Commercial tracking data resides in the Unified Data Library, a cloud repository. In 2021 the Space Force awarded Bluestaq a $280 million, two-year extension to expand it, SpaceNews reported.

Breaking Defense reported in September that commercial tracking data in the library runs on a parallel system, outside the Space Force's operational space domain awareness systems. Col. Barry Crocker, who leads Space Force Mission Delta 2, told Breaking Defense that the unit plans a prototype this fall that brings commercial and military tracking data together in a separate software environment, to avoid degrading the accuracy of the military sensor data used for collision avoidance.

Companies active in space domain awareness and related training appear in smaller awards. The record shows $50.9 million on a contract with ExoAnalytic Solutions, which Anduril agreed to acquire in March, for specialized studies and analysis for the Space Systems Command special programs directorate, which ended September 13, and $36.9 million on Slingshot Aerospace's Orbital Lab training and visualization contract, which ended April 30; Slingshot holds a $22.0 million award from 2025 for a distributed synthetic training environment. LeoLabs had $12.9 million for access to its space situational awareness catalog in 2024 and a $13.6 million small business research award in 2025. Anduril holds a $27.2 million task order under its SDANet contract. NASA announced on September 29 that Omitron had won its orbital safety analysis contract, about $23.5 million over five years, covering conjunction screening for NASA's uncrewed spacecraft, support for human spaceflight, and analysis for the Office of Space Commerce.

Outside the United States the field is drawing private money. Portugal's Neuraspace raised about $18 million in August; Munich's Project-S came out of stealth in September with what it calls multi-million-euro backing; and Beijing-based Xingchen Daohe raised about $14 million for a tracking constellation.

Civil space traffic coordination

The Commerce Department's Traffic Coordination System for Space, TraCSS, is the civil counterpart. It has been built through a set of smaller awards: Parsons, $32.9 million for system integration and cloud management; SAIC, $16.3 million for cloud infrastructure; Data Networks, $9.4 million for engineering and operations; the Aerospace Corporation, $8.3 million and $6.2 million; Slingshot, $7.4 million for the system's presentation layer; and MITRE, $5.6 million.

TraCSS released a production environment in March and has onboarded at least 70 satellite operators and at least 10 nations, Via Satellite reported in August. It remains in a pilot phase, combines the Defense Department's catalog with operators' own orbit data, and runs six screenings a day; its commercial data purchases are on hold. Congress gave the Office of Space Commerce $52.5 million for fiscal 2026, and the fiscal 2027 request is $11 million, FedScoop reported. The office's director, Taylor Jordan, told lawmakers it was weighing a contractor-owned model, data as a service or a government system, and was also exploring a fee-based system or another form of collaboration with industry.

Command and control

The Space Force has issued separate awards for command-and-control prototyping, infrastructure, modernization and sustainment. Modern Technology Solutions holds $112.4 million to prototype processes for the space command and control mission area through 2030; Systems Planning and Analysis holds $93.1 million for infrastructure, platforms and networks at specific security classifications; Omitron holds $36.1 million for modernizing the operational technology; and Kratos holds $73.2 million for sustaining and operating the Command and Control System–Consolidated. A $1.8 million Cohere Solutions award running through April 2028 is evaluating data strategies for training AI for space command and control. In July, Sphinx Defense won a $287 million contract for ground mission planning software for Evolved Strategic Satcom, a program supporting the nation's strategic nuclear command, control and communications.

The ground segment for new constellations

The Space Development Agency's satellites run on ground software too. General Dynamics Mission Systems holds the Tranche 1 operations and integration contract, $1.05 billion obligated since 2022 and $143.6 million paid out. On September 2 the agency issued a presolicitation, FA240126R0006, for ground entry points for its low Earth orbit Resilient Missile Warning and Tracking layer, covering engineering, integration, test and operational support to evolve the terrestrial communications and ground segment of its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.

Three recent notices concern ground stations, where the software share of the work is not stated: the Space Force's rapid capabilities office asked industry in July about maturing and sustaining an optical ground station for space domain awareness; the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Peraton $24.8 million on September 28 for Relay Ground Station South at Schriever Space Force Base; and NOAA asked in August for sources for ground station as a service.

Flight software and onboard computing

Two spacecraft flight software frameworks are NASA's own and free to use: Goddard's core Flight System and JPL's F Prime, both released under the Apache 2.0 license. Recent examples of processing on the spacecraft itself: NASA Ames awarded EraDrive a sole-source contract on September 22 for spacecraft optical navigation and autonomy modules. NaviGate, spun out of Sapienza University of Rome, reported a successful in-orbit demonstration of onboard precise orbit determination in September. Intel introduced Starfire in July, a chip for onboard data processing and AI workloads, and Google's first Project Suncatcher satellite, a step toward computing in orbit, was set to fly on SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare.

Design and simulation tools

Systems Tool Kit, the mission modeling software sold by Analytical Graphics, passed to Ansys when it bought the company for $722.5 million in December 2020. Synopsys completed its acquisition of Ansys on July 17, 2025. The government also issues its own notices for simulation and software support: NASA Johnson posted a notice in September to raise the ceiling on its Simulation and Software Technology III contract for the center's software, robotics and simulation division, and the Space Force is gathering industry responses on training, modeling and simulation support for space warfighters until October 8. Satellite operations software companies appear in the record through smaller awards, among them Quindar's $3.1 million for a cloud-based, multi-mission automated satellite operations platform and Epsilon3's software license and test procedure awards.

Who is hiring for it

Of the 6,609 openings this site saw at 33 space employers in the week to October 1, 843 carry software, data, cloud, security or embedded engineering titles, about 13 percent. At SpaceX the share is 481 of 2,691, about 18 percent. Sixty-five titles name flight, ground, guidance and navigation, mission, satellite or spacecraft software.