CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE STATION, Fla.—Air Force and Space Force personnel and systems have stood at the ready to remotely destroy a rocket if it were to go off course from the Eastern Range and endanger the public. Now as launch companies adopt autonomous flight ...
Going the full fiscal year funded by a continuing resolution would cost the Defense Department the ability to procure two space launches and cause a “ripple effect for years to come.” Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond addressed the effects of ...
The commander of Space Launch Delta 30 envisions Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., as a “national spaceport” and said the launch delta is trying to figure out how to make that dream a reality. Vandenberg has plenty of room to grow, and the convenience of ...
Reports of production troubles on the SpaceX rocket that could contend for military cargo deliveries happened to coincide with a different company’s concept receiving an early nod—one that might not require a rocket at all.
The Space Force plans to try out a used rocket booster—a first under the National Security Space Launch program—when it launches the fifth GPS III satellite on June 17. The new satellite likely will amount to a modest improvement in GPS location accuracy but with ...
The Air Force wants to soon be able to deliver cargo from space, and it is putting real money behind the effort. The Department of the Air Force announced June 4 that the Rocket Cargo effort is the department’s fourth Vanguard program, joining the Skyborg ...
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, ...
SpaceX will carry data-transport and missile-tracking satellites to orbit for the Space Development Agency, the Pentagon said Dec. 31. SpaceX won a $150.5 million contract for two launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., starting in September 2022. The entire constellation of up to 28 ...
Historic Air Force installations on Florida’s Space Coast marked a modern milestone on Dec. 9 as they were redesignated Patrick Space Force Base and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station—the first facilities named as part of the new service. “Today, we start a new era at ...
The Space Force is thinking ahead to what it might need from rocket providers at the end of the decade, as it plans for the next phase of the National Security Space Launch program. The service released a request for information on Nov. 10 to ...
The Space Force plans to swear in NASA Astronaut and Air Force Col. Michael S. Hopkins while he’s aboard the International Space Station as part of the upcoming Crew-1 Mission, a service official confirmed to Air Force Magazine on Oct. 29. Hopkins is slated to ...
A military team is working with SpaceX to flesh out the prospect of shipping routes that pass through space, the head of U.S. Transportation Command said Oct. 7. That group could demonstrate as early as 2021 whether quickly sending cargo around the globe via space ...