Steve Butow, director of the space portfolio at the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), said the U.S. military is now looking to migrate to a new space architecture that could allow the government to incorporate emerging technologies and use commoditized satellite buses and related components to build modular systems, SpaceNews reported Wednesday.
“The 20th century model doesn’t exist anymore,” said Butow said Wednesday at the SmallSat Symposium. “We need a logistics infrastructure that that’s not exclusive to the military to civil space or commercial space but a logistics architecture.”
Such an architecture would enable the government to purchase new satellites and use space tug services from the commercial sector to upgrade the spacecraft with new sensors and processors.