A pair of Air Force units across two major commands have announced plans to purchase services from SpaceX’s Starlink constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit. The contracts come not long after service leaders praised the effectiveness of the satellite internet service in aiding Ukraine ...
Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. "Jay" Raymond offered some of his early observations on the role of space activities in the war in Ukraine. After nearly a three-year pandemic hiatus, many of the world's top national security and foreign affairs officials gathered in ...
NASA, SpaceX, and United Launch Alliance are all preparing to launch their next-gen rockets from Florida’s Space Coast, two of them before the year is out. One is expected to liberate the U.S. launch enterprise from its reliance on Russian-made RD-180 engines, while all three rockets ...
Drawn closer by business interests and geopolitical necessity, the military and NASA “would be remiss” not to collaborate more, said the space agency’s No. 2 political appointee. Yet as the Defense Department has committed billions in weapons toward a Russian defeat in Ukraine, NASA Deputy ...
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 ...