Theresa Hitchens is the Senior reporter, Space at Breaking Defense. The former Defense News editor was a senior research associate at the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM). Before that, she spent six years in Geneva, Switzerland as director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).
A sci-fi geek, voracious reader, enthusiastic cook, dabbler in poetry, Theresa is also the proud mom of a wonderful young man by the name of Nicholas.
"We invest in high-risk, high-payoff research to support some of the most difficult challenges to the IC," IARPA program manager Alexis Truitt told Breaking Defense. And debris is "one of the hardest challenges that is affecting satellites worldwide."
The new military accord signed by Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the US presages joint stance on future space norms.
Why edge and endpoint security can’t be an afterthought.
Missile Defense Agency pushes back, pointing Breaking Defense to positive report from Pentagon tester, laudatory comments from senior military officials and recent test wins.
"I don't think we would respond," a government source said bluntly about what would happen if Russia used a non-kinetic attack on an American commercial satellite.
NOAA next week will issue first requests for proposal to industry asking for help in setting requirements for an unclassified space tracking and collision warning system, said Steve Volz, who currently manages the effort.
On-board, or "edge," processing is key to SDA's plans to develop a satellite network that can gather data from multiple sensors on the ground, at sea and in space to provide operators with precise, near-real-time targeting information.
Reducing cognitive overload on warfighters while improving “time to trust” for autonomous systems is a matter of design.
The formal planning meeting adjourned to a private venue after the clock ran out on interpretation services at the Palais de Nations and building management threatened to kill the lights on the diplomatic squabbling.
Kendall's memo was "a proactive effort by the department to support the Vice President, and ensure the Department of Defense can support Biden Administration efforts to foster a broader role for the commercial space sector in supporting a more resilient space capabilities," an Air Force official told Breaking Defense.
"You really need to worry about the tactical things. You really need to defend your surface ships, air bases, all that stuff," NDIA's Mark Lewis said.
Additional satellites will help ICEYE reach its goal of imaging the same spot on Earth every eight hours, ICEYE CEO and cofounder Rafal Modrzewski told Breaking Defense.
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
"Clearly an exchange of diplomatic notes is better than an exchange of Twitter fire (or worse). But diplomatic notes won’t fill in the gaps in space governance and traffic safety," Jessica West of Canada's Project Ploughshares said.
"Undersea cable infrastructure is ripe for sabotage," said Karen Jones, one of the authors of the study.
Ahead of the Wednesday launch, mystery surrounds what the mission of NROL-87 is. NRO never talks about the purpose of specific satellites, period, but the payload will be launched to an orbit consistent with that of an imaging satellite.
The Senate version of the 2022 defense appropriations bill also includes $50 million, a House aide explained, but the House version only includes $5 million.