Los Alamos National Laboratory has received funding for a new space payload to increase on-orbit computational capabilities. The project is jointly sponsored by the National Nuclear Security Administration‘s (NNSA) Office of Non-proliferation Research and Development (NA-22), and the U.S. Department of Defense.

The experimental payload will demonstrate and validate technologies offering more than 1,000 giga operations-per-second (processing capability for software-defined radio (SDR) functions in space. SDR is a technology of interest to the military to support tactical communications and to commercial television and radio broadcasting.