One of the state's fastest-growing companies over the past couple of years ended 2022 by landing one of its largest contracts to date.
Verus Research announced on Dec. 29 that it was awarded a five-year, $37.5 million contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate. The contract, according to Verus, is to develop a program called "Tools for Enabling Autonomous Multi-satellite Systems," or TEAMS.
TEAMS stems from Verus Research's work surrounding autonomous software and radio frequency systems. It's focused on satellite operations, so that Verus can quantify the "advantages of using autonomy to solve specific problems" in space, according to a news release on the company's website.
"The TEAMS award is an important next step that advances our cutting-edge research in these technical domains," Verus Research's chief operating officer Dan Treibel said in an email statement to Business First on Jan. 4. "We look forward to our highly skilled team members building a robust foundation of novel technologies that advance the state of the art in this area."
Verus is partnering with the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque-based IDEAS Engineering & Technology, Virginia-based Trusted Space Inc. and the Georgia Tech Research Corporations on the TEAMS program.
Ultimately, the program could result in a flight experiment using a series of autonomy payloads to demonstrate a "specific autonomy use case" and establish autonomy as a beneficial tool for satellite operators, according to Verus' website.
"This program puts [the Air Force Research Laboratory] at the forefront of on-board satellite autonomy by researching, developing and demonstrating game changing collaborative multi-satellite technologies through verifiable AI-enabled algorithms, resilient communications for close proximity satellite interactions," said Sean Phillips, Ph.D., deputy technical advisor of the Space Control Branch for the laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate, in a Jan. 4 email statement to Business First.
"The technology developed under this program will lead to a ground breaking paradigm shift in the future of space operations," Phillips continued in the statement.
The company won a $23.4 million contract award with the U.S. Army in September 2020. Verus' Chief Financial Officer and Managing Director Hank Andrews at the time called the contract one of the company's largest ever. The company more recently announced two contracts with the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force.
Verus was founded in 2014 and has its headquarters at 6100 Uptown Blvd NE, Suite 260. It opened a research facility in Northeast Albuquerque in Spring 2021 and counts Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies and NASA among its other large customers.
