Cramer Announces SDA & UND Collaborations

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BISMARCK, N.D. - U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) announced he will be meeting with officials from the Space Development Agency (SDA) and University of North Dakota (UND) this week to talk about three new efforts of collaboration on educational opportunities and workforce development.

The first is an Educational Partnership Agreement between SDA and UND. This agreement will permit SDA to loan defense laboratory equipment, transfer surplus computers and equipment, allow SDA personnel to teach science courses, provide sabbatical opportunities for faculty and internship opportunities for students, and involve faculty and students in projects. It will also enable students to receive credit for participation in projects, and SDA staff to provide academic and career advice and assistance to students.

The Educational Partnership Agreement will involve SDA being designated as a Defense Laboratory by the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL).

SDA is also working with UND to build a student training center, which will be a digital twin of the Operations Center North at the Grand Forks Air Force Base. The vision is to have it reflect the same capabilities as the actual ops center and have a high-speed connection with SDA's equipment. It will be used to teach UND students on space and satellite constellation operations, but also be available as a test bed for improvements.

A third collaboration effort involves SDA working with UND's Small Business Accelerator to help efforts related to developing, populating, and operating low earth orbit satellite constellations. SDA could use some of its Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDTE) small business funding to advance UND's efforts to help turn faculty and student research into productive small businesses. Cramer helped pass this year's National Defense Authorization Act, which includes $19 billion in Space Force funding to support research, development, testing, and evaluation efforts.

"Any one of these collaborations would be impressive on their own, but the three of them together, I think, really testifies to the confidence the Space Development Agency and Space Force have in UND and rightfully so," said Cramer. "This is exactly what I envisioned in 2019 when I began bringing national space leaders to the University of North Dakota and to the Grand Forks Air Force Base. I knew, we all knew in North Dakota, how incredible UND is and how important the Grand Forks Air Force Base and Grand Sky are to the future of the warfighter and SDA saw it right away. Since Dr. Tournear was my guest in 2020 until now and well into the future, this is a long-term relationship that will benefit the United States of America, Grand Forks, North Dakota, and certainly, the University of North Dakota. So, great team work everybody, and I look forward to being a part of it for a long, long time."

Joining Cramer at this week's meeting will be Greg Wyler, founder, CEO and Chief Architect of E-space, and a Visiting Fellow MIT Aeroastro, who will be making some of the satellites that SDA will operate in the future.

"I am excited that Greg was willing to join me to see all the reasons why SDA chose Grand Forks," said Cramer. "With his 35 patents related to the design, implementation and use of satellite communications technology, few people have as much experience in taking an idea and putting it into space."

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