BlueHalo to Deploy Mercury Systems’ Digital Signal Solution for Space Force Satellite Program

Mercury Systems announced that BlueHalo has again tapped its support for the U.S. Space Force Satellite Communication Augmentation Resource project, building upon an initial production agreement in 2023. 

Under the new agreement, Mercury Systems will supply its field-programmable gate array-based common signal acquisition and digital beamforming solution to BlueHalo’s Broad Area Deployable Ground terminal enabling Resilient communication, or BADGER, in the SCAR program. 

Signal processing hardware will be delivered throughout 2024 for the additional BADGER systems that BlueHalo is producing, Mercury Systems said Thursday.

The company added that it is currently supplying BlueHalo hardware developed from its commercial products Quartz RFSoC and Navigator Design Suite. Ken Hermanny, Mercury System vice president and general manager of signal technologies, expects the innovation of the company’s commercial platforms to deliver “game-changing capability at great speed and scale.”

Jonathan Moneymaker, BlueHalo’s CEO and a past Wash100 award winner, cited Mercury Systems as “a trusted partner” with a signal processing hardware contributing to BADGER’s performance. He said that the new supply agreement represents the system’s first entry into “high-rate manufacturing.” 

BADGER’s multi-band deployable ground communications system features agile and reconfigurable beamforming tiles designed to simplify mission operations. BlueHalo demonstrated in fall 2023 the system’s signal tracking and processing via multiband software-designed antenna tiles. The USSF’s Space Rapid Capabilities Office awarded BlueHalo the SCAR contract valued at $1.4 billion in 2022.