The Air Force Research Laboratory will soon have the first operational oscillating heat pipes flying in space, marking the first operational application of fourth-generation spacecraft thermal control. The technology, which was previously tested aboard the secretive X-37B reusable spaceplane, is expected to be used in ...
U.S. Space Command boss Army Gen. James H. Dickinson declared the command’s initial operational capability in a speech at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Aug. 24. IOC status means the Defense Department’s 11th combatant command has “matured to the point where we ...
At a session presented at the cyber conference DEF CON last week, The Aerospace Corp’s top cybersecurity expert briefed attendees about the growing problem of closed-source, proprietary software in commercial spacecraft. Such programs are difficult to test for vulnerabilities that could let a hacker break ...
America’s partners and allies will increasingly help foot the bill and strengthen U.S. Space Force capabilities, Vice Chief of Space Operations Space Force Gen. David D. Thompson said during a virtual Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event July 28. “That has changed dramatically in the ...
U.S. Space Command boss Army Gen. James H. Dickinson said his work is inseparable from that of U.S. Cyber Command but that policy must change to keep up with evolving threats in the cyber domain. A former senior Pentagon official in national security space told ...
As the last Americans leave Afghanistan, U.S. Central Command will look to space to support its continued counterterrorism mission against al-Qaida and Islamic State group remnants, U.S. Space Command confirmed to Air Force Magazine. America’s eyes in the sky will form the only intelligence picture ...
The Space Force’s No. 2 officer inspected the aerospace research facilities of its newest university partner June 24 under a program designed to help it recruit personnel with more technical expertise. Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David D. Thompson and Mark Kennedy, president of ...
Special-ops aviators, a physicist from the intelligence community, and an enlisted Marine with decades of deployments: U.S. Space Command’s military and civilian leaders who spoke May 7 were as likely to come from strictly space backgrounds as not. These are some of the day’s insights ...
The Defense Department has no plans to shoot down a spent Chinese Long March 5B rocket booster, which is out of control and could reach Earth's surface after re-entry, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III reported. The U.S. demonstrated an anti-satellite capability in 2008 against ...
Space is “pretty much the wild, wild West” with more satellites going into orbit and a large increase in space junk threatening assets. Meanwhile, the growing U.S. Space Force is working to establish operating norms in orbit to avoid added danger.
“Ingenuity,” a four-pound helicopter carried to Mars on NASA's “Perseverance” lander/rover, made the first powered, controlled flight on another planet April 19, achieving an altitude of 10 feet. Four more flights, going as high as 50 meters high and 600 meters away, are planned in ...
The Defense Department's Space Development Agency wants to blanket Earth with a constellation of low-cost, open-architecture data-relay and missile-tracking satellites whose sheer numbers, along with their 1,000-kilometer-high orbits, would theoretically thwart some modes of interference—but not all. With all going according to plan so far, ...