With eyes on future NASA moon base, Space Force launches cislunar acquisition task force
Meanwhile, the Air Force Research Laboratory is gearing up to launch its experimental cislunar monitoring satellite, called Oracle Prime, next year.
Meanwhile, the Air Force Research Laboratory is gearing up to launch its experimental cislunar monitoring satellite, called Oracle Prime, next year.
The Space Force is "serious" about integrating cislunar capabilities, with plans to work closely with NASA and the Air Force Research Laboratory on new tech, Tom Ainsworth, Air Force space acquisition officer, said today.
Breaking Defense Europe will launch May 4 with Tim Martin and Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo as co-editors.
The move widens Intuitive Machines' past focus on the Moon to the space market closer to Earth.
DRACO began life in 2020 with the moniker "Reactor on a Rocket," or ROAR — a name agency scientists later decided might garner negative attention.
The Space Force is interested in DRACO primarily as an option for allowing it to undertake rapid on-orbit maneuvers, but also for potential future missions out to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
New Delhi's adherence to the accords represents a boost to US efforts to rally allies to help counter China's expansion of its own civil and military space activities, as well as Beijing's use of space as a soft-power tool on the global stage.
"When people like to question the validity or usefulness of this engine, I point them to Wernher von Braun," said Tabitha Dodson, DRACO program manager at DARPA, "because this was more or less his idea."
The second moon race is on, and the US needs better eyes in the sky and coordination on the ground, writes Mike Rogers Center for Intelligence & Global Affairs Director Joshua Huminski.
Space Force has established the new 19th Space Defense Squadron to monitor what officials now refer to as "xGEO" space.
The B-SURE bio-bugs program is a first baby step in using biology to create a space-based supply chain, reducing reliance on materials launched from Earth.
The Aerospace study found that controlling the creation of dangerous space junk is a regulatory arena "where clarity is badly needed," for one.
"[W]e don't have a military reason to go to the Moon today, but we do have long term-objectives that include the expansion out to the Moon and beyond," Space Force Chief Scientist Joel Mozer says.
AFRL last Thursday held a classified stakeholder meeting to discuss R&D to underpin future military operations beyond the traditional near-Earth orbits used today.