Troy Meink, principal deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office, said in a keynote speech at the Satellite 2024 conference that the NRO sees value in leveraging new commercial capabilities for certain missions where small satellites can meet requirements at lower cost.
“We have to have a transparent conversation, so they can understand what the future demand signal might look like,” said Gen. Michael Guetlein, the Space Force’s vice chief of space operations, at the Ronald Reagan Institute’s National Security Innovation Base Summit. “So [VCs] know that, if they’re going to take a bet, there’s a chance that that bet’s going to win.”
SpaceX has long intended to upgrade this second pad — SLC-40 at neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station — to expand its crew launch capacity.
The request includes $5.4 billion for Johnson Space Center in Houston; $5 billion for Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville; $4.3 for NASA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.; and $3.6 billion for Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.
One of the bills, the Accessing Satellite Data to Enable New Discoveries (ASCEND) Act, would formally authorize NASA’s commercial data acquisition program, so they can purchase remote sensing data from companies for research purposes.
The bill provides NASA with $24.875 billion. GOES-R and the Polar Weather Satellites program receive their full request while other NOAA programs receive less than requested.
This is the first Starship to complete its full-duration ascent burn, and the first Starship to experience reentry from space.
Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall, told reporters that the 2025 request is an “acceptable” budget for the Space Force, but not an optimal one, because, “The proposed funding allows key space programs to move forward but not quite at the pace that DoD would like to stay ahead of the Chinese threat.”
John Couluris, senior vice president of lunar permanence at Blue Origin, said the company was planning to launch the first “Mark 1” version of its Blue Moon lander in as soon as a year. The company is planning at least two flights of the Blue Moon Mark 1 lander as it works on the Mark 2 lander intended to carry people.
Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton, the Space Force’s chief planning officer, will lead the project to stand up Space Futures Command, USSF’s fourth and newest Field Command, with the goal to reach initial operational capability before the year is out.
