Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, the third of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services missions, delivered 10 NASA payloads to Mare Crisium on March 2. Onboard instruments will help scientists study how lunar dust adheres to various materials and whether electromagnetism can be used to prevent it from sticking to objects.
With only a few weeks to develop a strategy and deliver it to the president, the Space Force’s new technical integrated planning team (IPT) is currently analyzing technological maturity, cost estimates, and capability gaps of space systems that could be part of the architecture.
The U.S. Space Force is investing billions of dollars to modernize aging infrastructure at its two coastal ranges to support a growing appetite for rides to space on larger rockets from a greater number of providers. That includes facelifts to wastewater treatment facilities and HVAC systems, road expansions to support transport of larger rockets, and relocating offices to operate outside designated safety zones during launches.
Guardians are now training automated tools on their activities and processes, in order to understand and build trust for the tools and find safe applications for AI, according to Seth Whitworth, the service’s acting deputy chief of space operations for cyber and data.
Dr. Emmons is leading initiatives to expand AI’s role in decision-making and predictive analytics to enhance mission resilience and operational efficiency. Her team’s efforts include developing generative AI techniques for anomaly detection in live telemetry data, integrating retrieval-augmented generation for document analysis, and advancing reinforcement learning for autonomous spacecraft operations.
The Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC) is a joint effort among the U.S., U.K., and Australia to track objects up to 22,000 miles above Earth in geosynchronous orbit (GEO). The Australia facility, which Northrop Grumman built, is set to go live by 2027.
Recent missions have had the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle—a 29-foot-long experimental spacecraft that can reenter the Earth’s atmosphere autonomously—entering highly elliptical orbit (HEO) and testing a new aerobraking maneuver capability.
The U.S. Space Force’s Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) program announced a $21.81 million award to Firefly Aerospace to launch Victus Sol, the third in the TacRS series. It will build upon the past two demonstrations of rapid satellite launch, and be the first to put an operational system in orbit.
Satellite manufacturing startup Apex Technology, which specializes in manufacturing standardized small satellite buses, secured a $45.9 million contract from the U.S. Space Forceds to deliver an unspecified number of satellites by 2032.
Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy, military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, wants to double down on stricter accountability for contractors and program managers.
