The U.S. Department of Defense awarded Hughes Network Systems a $495,000 contract to conduct an architectural study of commercial communications satellite systems capabilities, Hughes announced March 7.
    The report will focus on meeting the U.S. military’s future tactical communications-on-the-move (COTM) needs and will to be delivered to the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Command Center‘s military satellite communications systems directorate by July.
    To conduct the study, Hughes said it would research requirements and scenarios using processing satellite architectures such as those employed by its Spaceway 3 satellite, which provides service to more than 400,000 Ka-band terminals in North America. Hughes also will study applications using transponded satellite architectures employed by its Ka-band Jupiter satellite, which is under development and scheduled for launch in 2012.