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The Department of Defense wants ideas for a tiny autonomous space station

The Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has issued a solicitation for a tiny, "self-contained and free flying orbital outpost" that can host experiments and equipment in orbit and could eventually be scaled up for human habitation.

The Orbital Outpost that's being solicited would be small: it needs to have at least a cubic meter of space inside, be able to carry 80 kilograms, have continuous power, and should have a pressurization of anywhere from 0 to 1 atmospheres. It should be able to move around in orbit on its own, and it has to be built quickly; the military wants it ready to go within two years after it awards a contractor a contract.

The military also says that it eventually wants the station to be modular (able to attach other components or other outposts), have a robotic arm, be able to carry people, and be hardened against radiation for "beyond [low Earth orbit] applications."

[...] A solicitation is just a proposal for contractors to submit an idea for any number of things that the military thinks it might need, like an autonomous aircraft to shepherd people on and off a battlefield. It's not an indication that the Department of Defense is imminently ready to establish its own fleet of space stations in orbit. Colonel Steve Butow, the director of the DIU's Space Portfolio, told Breaking Defense in an email that his outfit is "casting a wide net for commercial solutions that can meet the basic needs described in the first part of the solicitation (autonomous/robotic, etc)" and that the military is "more interested in the 'how' rather than the 'why'."

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