Tag: space force

Space Force chief: Timing of Chinese spaceplane launch “no coincidence”

China has launched its top-secret military spaceplane for a third time, days after the US military’s winged spacecraft was grounded for several weeks due to problems with its SpaceX rocket.

Observers believe China’s spaceplane looks much like the US military’s X-37B, a reusable craft that Pentagon officials are similarly tight-lipped about. But there’s a distinction in that US officials will publicly discuss, at least in broad terms, the purpose of the X-37B and release images of the spacecraft.

The US military has two X-37Bs in its inventory, each with a cargo bay that could fit a large refrigerator. They resemble small space shuttles, with dimensions about one-quarter those of NASA’s retired shuttle orbiters. The X-37B spaceplanes have flown in space six times, logging missions as long as two-and-a-half years, thanks to deployable solar panels that generate power for greater endurance.

The seventh X-37B flight was supposed to launch this week from Florida, but officials called off the launch to resolve technical issues with its Falcon Heavy rocket.

Then, on Thursday, China sent its own spaceplane aloft on a Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan launch base in northwestern China. The Long March 2F is typically used to launch Chinese astronaut crews into orbit but has been modified to accommodate China’s unpiloted robotic spaceplane inside its payload fairing.

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Space Command is fully operational, if still officially homeless

The Pentagon’s newest warfighting command has achieved full operational capability, despite continued wrangling over where to put a permanent headquarters for U.S. Space Command. 

“Since its establishment in 2019, USSPACECOM has been singularly focused on delivering exquisite capability to the joint force to deter conflict, defend our vital interests, and, if necessary, defeat aggression. Thanks to the disciplined initiative of our people and the support of our joint, combined and partnered team, I can confidently say we have reached full operational capability,” Gen. James Dickinson, head of SPACECOM, said in a statement Friday. 

The Pentagon uses “full operational capability” to describe an organization that has proved, through tests and real-world scenarios, it can accomplish all aspects of its missions. 

Space Command, which has called Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado home ever since its formation during the Trump administration, has been tangled in a years-long, highly political debate over its potential move to Alabama. 

Lawmakers, who rehashed the Alabama-versus-Colorado debate this September, included language in the compromise version of the 2024 defense policy bill that would prevent the command from building a headquarters until two government watchdog agencies finish investigating the Biden administration’s reversal of the Trump administration recommendation.

Air Force officials have previously told lawmakers that staying in Colorado would reduce operational risk and prevent losing many of its civilian workers, who make up 60 percent of its workforce.

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Space Force is going to track “abnormal” objects in outer space

As the military’s youngest branch, U.S. Space Force is still finding its footing. That includes everything from trying to get its uniforms right (a work in progress) to laying out its specific doctrine on topics. This month Space Training and Readiness Command (also known as the aptly named STARCOM) published a new bit of space doctrine: SDP 3-100, Space Domain Awareness, which the command called “the first operational level doctrine publication developed by STARCOM for the U.S. Space Force.”

The overall document is straightforward, explaining how Space Force plans to operate its own satellites and take into account other nations’ space craft, satellites both national and commercial and generally plan for what happens in orbit. But as the team at Space.com noticed, buried in the wider document is a look at the unknown abnormal phenomena, what the military calls UAPs (and are more widely known as UFOs). 

“It requires the ability to rapidly identify and respond to threats and hazards, including objects that exhibit abnormal observables and patterns of life and cannot [be] correlated to any owner or point of origin,” the document notes.

This is where the UFO jokes kick in. 

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US Space Force creates 1st unit dedicated to targeting adversary satellites

The United States Space Force has activated its first and only unit dedicated to targeting other nations’ satellites and the ground stations that support them.

The 75th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron (ISRS) was activated on Aug. 11 at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado. This unit is part of Space Delta 7, an element of the U.S. Space Force tasked with providing intelligence on adversary space capabilities. It’ll do things like analyze the capabilities of potential targets, locate and track these targets as well as participate in “target engagement,” which presumably refers to destroying or disrupting adversary satellites, the ground stations that support them and transmissions sent between the two.

Lt. Col. Travis Anderson, who leads the squadron, said in a Space Force statement that the idea of a dedicated space targeting unit has been years in the making. “Today is a monumental time in the history of our service,” Anderson said. “The idea of this unit began four years ago on paper and has probably been in the minds of several U.S. Air Force intelligence officers even longer.”

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‘Brilliant’ Space Force director who oversees space combat planning brought sex toys to work and wore a ‘mankini’ to his work Christmas party – but still has his job and six-figure salary

A top Space Force director kept sex toys at work, work a ‘mankini’ on top of his clothes at a staff Christmas party, and reveled in innuendo and lewd comments, according to a damning internal report made public this week.

Andrew Cox, director of the Space Force’s Space Warfighting Analysis Center, has retained his job and his six-figure salary despite the report, which was launched in the fall of 2020 and completed in April 2021.

Cox was described in the report, obtained by Air Force Times, as being ‘technically brilliant’ but ‘acting like a 13-year-old boy’.

The Air Force – under whose umbrella Space Force falls – said that the matter had been dealt with internally, but did not provide details.

‘Mr. Cox remains the director of the Space Warfighting Analysis Center,’ said Ann Stefanek, Air Force spokesperson, on Friday.

‘The matter was addressed through established civilian personnel processes.’

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US Space Plane Orbits Earth For 900 Consecutive Days With Mysterious Payloads

U.S. Space Force’s robotic X-37B space plane keeps extending its flight-duration record, orbiting around the Earth for 900 days, according to Space.com. 

The reusable space plane designed and built by Boeing is flying its sixth mission, known as Orbital Test Vehicle-6 or OTV-6, which was initially launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on May 17, 2020. It remains unclear when the top-secret mission will end. 

On Jul. 7, Boeing Space tweeted the X-37 “has set another endurance record — as it has on every mission since it first launched in 2010.” 

Many of OTV-6’s experiments and activities are classified. But some experimental payloads have been made public, such as the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s Photovoltaic Radio-frequency Antenna Module, a small device that converts solar power into radio frequency microwave energy. 

Space.com expands more on the non-classified experiments and technologies being tested:

“Technologies being tested in the X-37B program include advanced guidance, navigation and control, thermal protection systems, avionics, high temperature structures and seals, conformal reusable insulation, lightweight electromechanical flight systems, advanced propulsion systems, advanced materials and autonomous orbital flight, re-entry and landing.”

The X-37B is similar to the retired space shuttle, although the space plane is a fraction of the size, coming in at 29 feet in length and 9.5 feet high, with a wingspan of 15 feet. 

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The US Space Force plans to start patrolling the area around the Moon

This week, the US Air Force Research Laboratory released a video on YouTube that didn’t get much attention. But it made an announcement that is fairly significant—the US military plans to extend its space awareness capabilities beyond geostationary orbit, all the way to the Moon.

“Until now, the United States space mission extended 22,000 miles above Earth,” a narrator says in the video. “That was then, this is now. The Air Force Research Laboratory is extending that range by 10 times and the operations area of the United States by 1,000 times, taking our reach to the far side of the Moon into cislunar space.”

The US military had previously talked about extending its operational domain, but now it is taking action. It plans to launch a satellite, likely equipped with a powerful telescope, into cislunar space. According to the video, the satellite will be called the Cislunar Highway Patrol System or, you guessed it, CHPS. The research laboratory plans to issue a “request for prototype proposals” for the CHPS satellite on March 21 and announce the contract award in July. The CHPS program will be managed by Michael Lopez, from the lab’s Space Vehicles Directorate. (Alas, we were rooting for Erik Estrada).

This effort will include the participation of several military organizations, and it can be a little confusing to keep track of. Essentially, though, the Air Force lab will oversee the development of the satellite. The US Space Force will then procure this capability for use by the US Space Command, which is responsible for military operations in outer space. Effectively, this satellite is the beginning of an extension of operations by US Space Command from geostationary space to beyond the Moon.

“It’s the first step for them to be able to know what’s going on in cislunar space and then identify any potential threats to US activities,” said Brian Weeden, director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation.

Weeden said he does not think the CHPS satellite will include capabilities to respond to any threats but will serve primarily to provide situational awareness.

So why is US Space Command interested in expanding its theater of operations to include the Moon? The primary reason cited in the video is managing increasing space traffic in the lunar environment, including several NASA-sponsored commercial missions, the space agency’s Artemis program, and those of other nations. It’s going to get crowded out there. A recent report by the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Fly Me to the Moon, examines the dozens of missions planned to the Moon over the next decade.

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Space Force general says US satellites are attacked on daily basis

A Space Force general said American satellites are attacked by adversaries every day in ways that flirt with “acts of war,” and the US will lose a space arms race if it doesn’t take action.

China and Russia regularly strike US satellites with lasers, radiofrequency jammers, and cyber attacks, Gen. David Thompson told The Washington Post in an op-ed published Tuesday.

“The threats are really growing and expanding every single day. And it’s really an evolution of activity that’s been happening for a long time,” said Gen. Thompson, Vice Chief of Space Operations in the new military branch.

“We’re really at a point now where there’s a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened.”

Thompson disclosed a 2019 incident when a Russian satellite flew so close to a US “national security satellite” that authorities believed it could be an offensive. But the spacecraft backed away and tested a projectile, according to the op-ed.

“It maneuvered close, it maneuvered dangerously, it maneuvered threateningly so that they were coming close enough that there was a concern of collision,” he reportedly said. “So clearly, the Russians were sending us a message.”

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U.S. generals planning for a space war they see as all but inevitable

A ship in the Pacific Ocean carrying a high-power laser takes aim at a U.S. spy satellite, blinding its sensors and denying the United States critical eyes in the sky.

This is one scenario that military officials and civilian leaders fear could lead to escalation and wider conflict as rival nations like China and Russia step up development and deployments of anti-satellite weapons.

If a satellite came under attack, depending on the circumstances, “the appropriate measures can be taken,” said Lt. Gen. John Shaw, deputy commander of U.S. Space Command.

The space battlefield is not science fiction and anti-satellite weapons are going to be a reality in future armed conflicts, Shaw said at the recent 36th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.

U.S. Space Command is responsible for military operations in the space domain, which starts at the Kármán line, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) above the Earth’s surface. This puts Space Command in charge of protecting U.S. satellites from attacks and figuring out how to respond if hostile acts do occur.

Military space assets like satellites and ground systems typically have been considered “support” equipment that provide valuable services such as communications, navigation data and early warning of missile launches. But as the Pentagon has grown increasingly dependent on space, satellites are becoming strategic assets and coveted targets for adversaries.

“It is impossible to overstate the importance of space-based systems to national security,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in a keynote speech at the symposium.

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Space Force launches a top secret ‘space domain awareness’ satellite into orbit from the bottom of a jet in first project by mystery ‘Space Safari’ unit

The U.S. Space Force successfully launched into orbit a ‘space domain awareness’ military satellite that it designed and built in less than a year, under a significantly tighter timeframe than what’s usual for space launches. 

The satellite, dubbed Odyssey, is the first launch of the Space Force’s secret, special projects unit. Odyssey hitched a ride inside a Northrop Grumman Pegasus rocket fixed to the bottom of a modified ‘Stargazer’ L-1011 carrier jet and launched from California‘s Vandenberg Space Force Base early Sunday morning. 

The hush-hush mission is the Space Force’s first trial with condensing the timeline it typically takes to launch vehicles into space. 

According to a press release from aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman, it ‘seeks to introduce speed, agility, and flexibility into the launch enterprise in order to respond to dynamic changes in the space domain.’ 

As its guinea pig, the Space Force used Odyssey, which is a surveillance satellite used to detect foreign objects floating in space.

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