Leaders of the Space Force foresee the service continuing to become more “lethal” in its third year, inventing new tactical scenarios while maturing its organizational charts and carving out roles for companies, universities, and other of the world’s militaries.
The Space Force's second-ever Hack-a-Sat competition challenged hackers to find vulnerabilities in earthbound satellite hardware, drawing eight hacker teams to vie for tens of thousands of dollars in cash. But while last year’s inaugural competition proved inspirational, this year's ended amid complaints by participants, who said ...
The Space Force has started to carve out new personnel rotations to accommodate advanced training and has turned to units for training ideas while beginning to envision what Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman called an “operational test and training infrastructure,” including new simulators. Like the ...
Small businesses teaming up with nonprofit research institutions have a head start at proposing concepts for mitigating orbital debris and other aspects of on-orbit servicing, assembly, and manufacturing. SpaceWERX director Lt. Col. Walter McMillan said SpaceWERX consulted fellow government entities, academic institutions, startups, small businesses, ...
The Space Force’s “go fast acquisition” of three new missile warning satellites passed a system-level critical design review Oct. 28 that judged how the satellites and associated ground systems will work together and how the new equipment will work with existing missile warning systems. The ...
One day after the Space Force’s second in command warned that the U.S. is “not as advanced as the Chinese or the Russians in terms of hypersonic programs,” a media report indicated that China’s likely test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic weapon this summer included an added ...
The Russian test of an anti-satellite weapon this week highlighted the vulnerability of orbital assets on which the U.S. military increasingly relies, and it dramatically demonstrated why a new U.S. Space Force research and development program is focused on defensive technologies, according to experts and military ...
A startup figuring out how to surveil the cislunar domain thinks a swarm of self-guiding cubesats could cover it, each revisiting the moon every 26 days. Unlike spacecraft in deep space now, its cubesats would maintain “radio silence.” The physicist-run startup Rhea Space Activity announced ...
Commercial satellite communication providers who want to sell their services to the U.S. military will have to meet the same voluminous cybersecurity standards imposed on federal agencies themselves—plus additional ones specific to space and national security, according to a Space Force official. The move comes ...
The Space Force wants to better visualize the space domain, so the Defense Innovation Unit is asking companies—both from the U.S. and internationally—to send in ideas for a shot at funding. Having teased the Global Space Innovation Project on social media, officials with the DIU ...
The Air Force Research Laboratory decided last year it would not separate out its space research in light of the creation of the Space Force but would instead remain one lab serving two services. The lab’s new Space Force customers say that, so far, they ...
On Jan. 8, 2020, Iran launched a barrage of 14 rockets at Al Asad Air Base, where American troops were stationed in Iraq. The 20th Theater Missile Warning Company, part of the Army's 1st Space Brigade, was in Qatar receiving direct downlink data from a ...