Breaking Defense — The Space Rapid Capabilities Office (SpRCO) intends to award two vendors contracts by the end of the year to demonstrate that Space Force satellites can be equipped with small, inexpensive on-board radar systems to warn of potential threats from nearby satellites.

Aviation Week — NASA is aiming to land two astronauts near the lunar south pole in late 2027. That mission—the third in the Artemis program—would follow a crewed flight test around the Moon slated for early- to mid-2026.

Air and Space Forces — The new Space Intelligence Production Cell (SIPC) will help to bridge the gap between the 76th ISR Squadron, which gathers and fuses intelligence related to space threats, and the 4th Intel Analysis Squadron, which provides in-depth analysis of technical intelligence.

The top U.S. Space Force general in Europe and Africa, Brig. Gen. Jacob Middleton, told DefenseScoop: “A lot of what we’re doing is training and educating [allies] on how to leverage commercial [space capabilities] — so they don’t have to come to us.”

SpaceNews — At the recent Air, Space and Cyber conference, Monty Greer, outreach coordinator for the COSMIC consortium at the Aerospace Corporation, said: “When we start to talk about dynamic space operations, the ears of our U.S. Space Command and U.S. Space Force members perk up.”

Air and Space Forces — At AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, USSF leaders said the relaunched “Space Force Front Door” will facilitate contact between the private sector and all of the acquisition and research organizations in the Space Force, not just Space Systems Command.

At TechCrunch Distrupt, the Aerospace Corporation will host a panel that breaks down how early-stage innovation is […] laying the foundation for the evolving space economy.

Air and Space Forces — At AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, U.S. Space Force leaders said they used navigation and electronmagnetic tools to ensure B-2 bombers could fly in and out of Iran’s airspace unchallenged during Operation Midnight Hammer in June.

ABC — NASA could launch its Artemis II mission, which will fly astronauts around the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, in February 2026.

Breaking Defense — The U.S. Space Force said they plan to replace its existing space domain awareness (SDA) constellation with “commercially available commodity spacecraft and payloads, focusing on integrating what’s available now over developing new designs.”