WASHINGTON — KBR secured a $176 million contract to maintain and modernize the Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site, a high-altitude facility that serves as a key node in the U.S. military’s space surveillance network.
The contract, announced Feb. 20, was a competitive procurement run by the Air Force Research Laboratory. The seven-year agreement covers operations, equipment maintenance, and upgrades to legacy space sensors. Two bids were received for the contract, according to AFRL.
The site known as AMOS is located at an elevation of 10,000 feet on the Hawaiian island of Maui. It has been used for military space tracking efforts since the Cold War. Initially established in the 1950s to monitor missile tests, the site has become part of the Pentagon’s space surveillance infrastructure. Today, it houses advanced telescopes used to monitor satellites, space debris, and potential adversarial threats in orbit. It is operated by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the U.S. Space Force’s 15th Space Surveillance Squadron.
AMOS is a component of the Ground-Based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance (GEODSS) system, a network of sensors that provide data on objects in deep space.
KBR, a Houston-based defense and government services contractor with about $7 billion in annual sales, expanded its foothold in the space sector through its 2020 acquisition of Centauri, an $800 million deal that brought into KBR expertise in space sensors and satellite tracking.
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