The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is set award about $36 million in contracts to companies interested in building system components for its Phoenix program, which aims to retrofit or retrieve old satellites for reuse. DARPA officials said there are currently about 1,300 GEO satellites worth more than $300 billion in orbit that could be retrofitted for new purposes. DARPA’s Phoenix system employs a class of small nano-satellites that are designed to ride as a secondary passenger on a commercial satellite launch payload heading to GEO orbit. The nano-satellite would then attach to the antenna of a non-operational satellite to create a new space system.