The US Space Force’s Space Systems Command has signed a new $150 million contract with L3Harris Technologies to sustain and modernize critical ground systems used for space surveillance. The agreement falls under the MOSSAIC program, short for Maintenance of Space Situational Awareness Integrated Capabilities, and is intended to improve faster decision-making, earlier threat warning, and sustained space superiority. L3Harris announced the award on April 7, 2026.

The MOSSAIC program has become one of the key pillars of the United States’ long-term space domain awareness architecture. According to L3Harris, the effort is now entering the seventh year of a decade-long program designed to provide reliable, high-availability surveillance data to military, civil, and commercial stakeholders. The broader objective is to ensure that commanders receive timely and accurate insight to protect critical space assets and preserve freedom of action in orbit.

The work to be performed under the contract focuses on sustaining and upgrading the ground infrastructure used to detect, track, and identify objects in space. In practical terms, this means supporting the continuity of existing surveillance systems while also improving their responsiveness to emerging threats. Earlier MOSSAIC program descriptions also emphasized upgrades to communications infrastructure and machine-to-machine tasking functions, showing that the initiative is not only about maintenance, but also about making space surveillance networks more adaptive and operationally effective.

L3Harris said the contract builds on more than 30 years of company experience in space domain awareness technologies, research, and mission-critical services supporting national defense and security missions. From the company’s perspective, the new award further strengthens its role in the operational backbone behind US military space surveillance and ground-based decision support.

More broadly, the contract highlights how space is increasingly being treated not only as a support domain, but as a contested operational environment that requires persistent awareness, resilient infrastructure, and rapid threat detection. In that sense, the MOSSAIC award reflects a wider US effort to keep its space surveillance architecture modern, integrated, and responsive as orbital activity and strategic competition continue to intensify. This final point is an inference drawn from the contract scope and the stated goals of the MOSSAIC program.