Space News:

The Space Development Agency, formed inside the Pentagon in 2019 to help accelerate the use of commercial space technology, was officially transferred to the U.S. Space Force on Oct. 1.

Congress mandated the transfer in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act due to concerns that there are too many organizations running space programs. Lawmakers noted that a key reason they supported establishing the Space Force was to consolidate and streamline the management of acquisition programs. 

When the Space Development Agency, or SDA, was established in March 2019, it was placed under the office of the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, a post then held by Mike Griffin, a staunch critic of the Defense Department’s procurement culture.

At the time, Griffin was pushing the Pentagon to shift from the traditional large geosynchronous satellites to low Earth orbit constellations that, he argued, would be cheaper and faster to build due to commercial innovations.

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