On March 30, 2026, York Space Systems announced that NASA and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) have extended the operations of the Polylingual Experimental Terminal (PExT) mission through 2027. This extension follows the successful completion of all primary objectives for the BARD mission, which launched in July 2025.
The PExT payload, hosted on a York S-CLASS satellite bus, acts as a “roaming” communications terminal in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). It allows spacecraft to switch dynamically between government and commercial relay networks, much like a cellular phone roaming between terrestrial carriers.
Mission Performance and BARD Success
The BARD mission (which stands for “Beyond-line-of-sight Agile Relay Demonstration”) served as the primary vehicle for validating PExT’s wideband, software-defined radio capabilities. Since its commissioning in late 2025, the mission has achieved several critical milestones:
- Interoperability: Completed over 100 on-orbit communication activities, successfully relaying data between NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) system and commercial networks including Viasat’s Global Xpress and SES’s O3b mPOWER.
- Cross-Network Handoff: Demonstrated real-time, multi-vendor data relay, where test data from Johns Hopkins APL was uploaded to a commercial satellite, acquired by the PExT terminal on BARD, and then relayed to a government TDRS satellite.
- Agility and Precision: Validated the York S-CLASS bus’s ability to perform the dynamic tracking required for Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) relay—a task significantly more complex than standard LEO operations.
Scope of the 2026–2027 Extension
The 12-month mission extension enables York and its partners to transition from basic relay validation to more advanced operational scenarios.
York is implementing new mission automation enhancements to streamline how the terminal handles complex network handoffs.
In 2026, the mission will begin expanded direct-to-Earth demonstrations with commercial ground service providers, including the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC). The extended operations will further mature wideband terminal architectures, providing a blueprint for the Department of Defense’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) and NASA’s planned transition to a commercial-first communication framework by 2031.
Executive Perspective
“PExT is delivering exactly what demonstration missions are meant to prove: real capability on orbit,” said Melanie Preisser, Executive Vice President and General Manager of York Space Systems. “The extension reflects strong on-orbit performance and allows us to further advance flexible communications architectures that combine government and commercial networks.”
