Space plays a key role in U.S. military operations around the world, including in recent conflagrations in the Middle East, a senior official noted. “In general, space is absolutely essential to any mission United States military does,” John Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space ...
Space
As both China and the U.S. push further into space, with plans to explore and conduct research on the moon in the not-so-distant future, the Pentagon and Congress need to take steps now to ensure freedom of operations in cislunar space—the vast expanse between geosynchronous ...
The Space Development Agency has selected three contractors to build 54 satellites—48 for missile warning/missile tracking (MW/MT) and six for missile defense—in deals worth a combined $2.5 billion, the agency announced Jan. 16. L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, and Sierra Space will all build 16 MW/MT satellites ...
Space Force Gen. Stephen N. Whiting became the new head of U.S. Space Command on Jan. 10, succeeding Army Gen. James Dickinson during a change of command ceremony at Peterson Space Force Base, Colo. In his speech as commander, Whiting pledged to foster partnerships with ...
The Space Development Agency (SDA) awarded a contract worth approximately $515 million to California-based Rocket Lab for 18 satellites that will help form the Tranche 2 Transport Layer (T2TL) of its massive low-Earth orbit constellation.
The Space Force held its first-ever “Red Skies” exercise last month—48 years after the first-ever Air Force “Red Flag”—simulating orbital combat and putting Guardians to the test.
Space Force leaders have become increasingly vocal about the need for responsible counterspace capabilities: weapons and operations that can hold enemies' space assets at risk to deter conflict. And it’s not just words—within the past year, the service has activated several units key to the ...
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a retired Air Force brigadier general and ISR pilot, has raised concerns about the service’s budget and the rate at which it is retiring aircraft in the past. Now, he’s hoping a new force design study he pushed for will articulate the ...
After multiple scrubbed launches, the Space Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle returned to orbit Dec. 28, riding a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center, Fla. The launch of the secretive reusable space plane came two weeks after China launched its own mysterious spacecraft, “Shenlong,” ...
