Latest news with #SpaceSafari
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Space Force commercial office eyes pilot for quick-reaction launches
The Space Force is exploring options to use its new Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve to facilitate on-demand launches for getting much needed capabilities on orbit quickly. Col. Richard Kniseley, who leads the service's Commercial Space Office, told reporters in an April 10 briefing at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo., his team will work with the Space Force's launch enterprise and its Space Safari office to that end. That office has been coordinating a series of Tactically Responsive Space exercises aimed at sharpening the service's ability to react to real-time, on-orbit needs. The pilot effort will focus on establishing a framework for using the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve, or CASR, for responsive launches. Kniseley said Space Safari is particularly interested in CASR's approach to managing supply chain risk and security issues and creating an on-call vendor pool. The goal is to start the pilot by this fall, Kniseley said, noting that the effort would largely be a tabletop exercise rather than an operational demonstration. The Space Force created the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve as a mechanism to leverage commercial capabilities both in peacetime and during a conflict. Officials have compared the program to the Air Force's Civil Reserve Air Fleet, which contracts with commercial airlines to provide additional airlift capacity in emergencies. While the Space Force has its own military-unique requirements, commercial space companies already provide many capabilities the Defense Department relies on, including satellite communications, space domain awareness and launch services. The service in recent years has made a concerted effort to better understand how it can take advantage of those capabilities and integrate them into a range of mission areas. The Space Force awarded its first four CASR contracts in early March. The awards totaled $1.1 million and went to companies who provide space domain awareness services. Kniseley said the service plans to make additional awards for satellite communications and tactical surveillance, reconnaissance and tracking — which includes data and imagery collection and dissemination. Kniseley noted that as the service starts to execute on the initial contracts, it's still fleshing out structural elements of CASR, like the policies around prioritizing government demand and how to offer financial protection for commercial companies who might be targeted by U.S. adversaries. The Space Force is working closely with the Pentagon's policy shop to address these questions and hopes to have results from an ongoing study in the next few months. The Commercial Space Office has also started convening CASR wargame exercises as a way to better understand the nuances of each mission area involved in the program. Kniseley said the team recently held its first commercial satellite communications wargame, bringing together several SATCOM vendors to explore how they would distribute capacity in various wartime and peacetime scenarios and weigh the demands of investors, private sector customers, government users and international allies. 'We have a number of different action items and topics we want to work on and we are now going to get back together with the SATCOM communication in May to have a deep dive to start answering some of those questions,' Kniseley said, noting that there will be a second SATCOM wargame later this year.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Space Force picks Firefly to launch Victus Sol rapid response mission
The Space Force last week awarded Firefly Aerospace a nearly $22 million contract to launch a mission aimed at transitioning the service's vision for rapid response capabilities from a demonstration to operations. The mission, dubbed Victus Sol, will be the fifth Tactically Responsive Space mission for the service since September of 2023 when it worked with satellite and rocket companies to deliver a spacecraft in a matter of months and launch it with just 27 hours of notice. To date, those activities have all been geared toward demonstrating the concept, but a spokesperson for Space Safari, which manages the missions, told Defense News on Friday that Victus Sol is 'moving beyond demonstrations' and will support Space Force operations. The spokesperson would not confirm any details about the mission, including its payload, objective or launch date. However, fiscal 2025 budget documents say the mission could launch in late 2025 or 2026, and the service has indicated that 2026 is its target for flying operational Tactically Responsive Space missions. The Space Force defines Tactically Responsive Space as the ability to react quickly to the threats that come from operating in an increasingly congested and adversarial space environment. That could mean launching satellites on short notice, maneuvering a prepositioned, spare spacecraft to augment a degraded system or buying data from a commercial partner during a crisis. Firefly, which launched the Space Force's first Tactically Responsive Space mission, said its Alpha rocket will be on standby for Victus Sol. As with other responsive missions, the Space Force will give Firefly a notice to prepare the vehicle for payload integration and launch. 'Firefly has ramped up our Alpha production line to meet that demand and provide flexibility to support the Space Force's urgent needs that keep us ahead of the game,' Firefly CEO Jason Kim said in a statement on Friday. Space Safari is slated to launch Victus Haze, its next Tactically Responsive Space mission, later this year. That mission will feature two launch vehicles: Firefly's Alpha and Rocket Lab's Electron. Firefly will carry payloads from True Anomaly and Rocket Lab will carry its own satellites. As part of Victus Haze, the satellites will be required to maneuver from a threat in space. The Space Force and U.S. Space Command have identified a growing need for satellites to be able to maneuver away from threats like debris or toward objects the U.S. may want to observe more closely.
