The bilateral rendezvous and proximity operation "illustrates France's ability to conduct dynamic and responsible operations to deter adversaries from acting against its space interests," according to France's Space Command.
US Space Command has now completed two rendezvous and proximity operations with partners in Multinational Forces Operation Olympic Defender: France and Britain.
The network transport architecture for NGC2 could be a hybrid approach that combines high assurance communications with 5G, WiFi, and multi-orbit satellites.
"I just think freedom of maneuver is going to be the enabler for every space mission going forward," said Gokul Subramanian, Anduril's senior vice president of engineering.
Space Systems Command is moving out with a trio of projects — contracting with Northrop Grumman for two separate experiments, and with Astroscale US for the first on-orbit refueling operation involving a military satellite.
"The US and France recently conducted our first ever bilateral rendezvous and proximity operation to demonstrate combined capabilities in space in the vicinity of a strategic competitor spacecraft," SPACECOM head Gen. Stephen Whiting said today.
The report finds that Russia has been increasingly successful at blocking Ukraine's use of SpaceX's Starlink communications constellation, citing media reports in December 2024 about a new system specifically targeting Starlink called Kalinka and developed by the Russian Center for Unmanned Systems and Technologies.
Reducing cognitive overload on warfighters while improving “time to trust” for autonomous systems is a matter of design.
Space Force leaders are sharpening their rhetorical swords regarding the service's need to build space warfighting chops.
The BRIDGES project is Scout's first with DARPA, but the company's SDA-related software and hardware — including its "plug and play" optical sensor packages designed as hosted payloads — already have caught the eye of Space Force officials.
"The envisioned lunar railroad network could transport humans, supplies and resources for commercial ventures across the lunar surface," according to Northrop Grumman's announcement.
"This will be a modified mission from the Victus Nox mission," David Ryan, space portfolio manager at the Defense Innovation Unit said, noting that "there are two parts of the mission, and DIU is working on a single part with Space Safari."
Why edge and endpoint security can’t be an afterthought.
"In a sense, we drive our satellites today as if we're going to church. Our adversaries drive their satellites as if they're going to combat," Lt. Gen. John Shaw, who recently retired from US Space Command, told Breaking Defense in this Q&A.
While the new Russian satellite didn't get super close to any others, its behavior "could be considered unfriendly," said Slingshot's Audrey Schaffer, who until recently served as the director of space policy at the National Security Council.
The COMSPOC study included a look at risks from unannounced rendezvous and proximity operations — such as those being routinely performed by the Russian "inspector" satellite Luch/Olymp that have raised hackles at the Defense Department — and the risks to US military satellites cause by mis-plotting the trajectories of adversary birds.
As the Space Force prepares to launch highly classified space domain awareness satellites, China calls foul on purported close approaches to its sats by existing US birds.