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President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to be NASA’s next administrator, Jared Isaacman, said Wednesday that as the U.S. establishes more of human presence in space, it will eventually need Space Force guardians stationed in the domain to protect its economic interests.
“I think it is absolutely inevitable,” Isaacman said at the Space Force Association’s Spacepower Conference in Orlando, Florida. “If Americans are in low Earth orbit, there’s going to need to be people watching out for them for all the reasons we described before.”
Isaacman, a tech billionaire who has traveled to space twice on commercial missions, said exploration and economic ambitions will drive more commercial and civil activity in space in the coming years — from space mining to NASA discovery missions. While some of that work will be done by robotic probes or remote operators, some of it will also require human input, he said.
Isaacman is CEO of Shift4 Payments, ..

ORLANDO, Fla. — The Space Force’s rapid acquisition arm is on track to start fielding new antennas to augment its aging Satellite Control Network by the end of next year.
Kelly Hammett, who leads the Space Rapid Capabilities Office, told reporters Wednesday the service is concerned that its current antenna network wouldn’t pass muster during a conflict. The system, which is dispersed around the world, provides critical launch support, satellite tracking and control, and emergency assistance for spacecraft.
Those concerns are driving an urgency to field the first new antenna through the Space RCO’s Satellite Communications Augmentation Resource program as fast as possible and secure funding more systems in the fiscal 2025 budget.
“If we get into a conflict in space, we will need additional augmentation to command and control our assets,” Hammett said during a briefing at the Space Force Association’s Spacepower Conference here. “There&rsqu..

The United Launch Alliance, a longtime government spacelift provider, has an incremental plan to upgrade its Centaur V upper stage to fly long-duration space missions.
The Centaur V powers the company’s new Vulcan rocket, which is on the verge of being certified to fly national security missions. The upper stage of a rocket is used to propel a payload further into space after the initial booster has separated. The Centaur V was designed to be more than twice as powerful as its predecessor and to remain in orbit for as long as 12 hours.
ULA CEO Tory Bruno told reporters Thursday the company’s longer-term vision is for the Centaur V to eventually be able to remain in space for days or longer. The fast-moving vehicle would be highly maneuverable and could be used to relocate satellites or for counterspace missions.
In a Dec. 4 Medium post, Bruno fleshed out his concept for the Centaur V to function as an in-space mobility platform, or a “Greyhound.” In one scenario, he describ..

ORLANDO, Fla. — U.S. Space Command is updating its approach to integrating commercial systems into operations as the broader national security space community takes a more forward-leaning posture toward working with the private sector.
Gen. Stephen Whiting, who leads the command, said the new strategy, which was signed out in November, focuses on SPACECOM’s core tasks and how commercial space capabilities fit within those areas. The update follows the release of two high-level commercial integration strategies earlier this year — the first from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the second from the Space Force.
The strategies are part of a larger Defense Department push to better engage with private sector space companies, encouraging the acquisition workforce to look for off-the-shelf systems when possible and developing concepts for how it will leverage commercial technology in future conflicts.
Last year, for example, the Space Force created a Commercial Space Of..

SpaceX on Monday night launched a secretive rapid response mission for the Space Force, flying a GPS III satellite aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
The effort, dubbed Rapid Response Trailblazer, was meant to demonstrate the ability to quickly plan and launch a mission in around six months — a process that normally takes around two years.
“The mission successfully demonstrated a complex integration effort across multiple Space Force organizations to pull an existing GPS III satellite from storage, accelerate integration and launch vehicle readiness, and rapidly process for launch,” the Space Force said in a statement.
The launch lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida around 7:52 p.m., and the first-stage booster landed on a drone ship after releasing the GPS payload.
The Space Force has proved through its Tactically Responsive Space program that it can quickly launch small payloads on commercial rockets, but this mission was the first to involve a large..

The leader of U.S. Space Operations Command is hopeful the Space Force can meet its goal of delivering a command-and-control platform that allows operators to see a common picture of the domain by the end of next year.
The software for that baseline capability,known as the Advanced Tracking and Launch Analysis System, or ATLAS, is being developed by L3Harris and is in the final stages of testing.
Lt. Gen. David Miller, who leads Space Operations Command, told reporters that while he knows delivering that system is a “big lift,” having a single platform that units can use to train, plan and fight from is at the top of his must-have list.
“That’s where I’d like to be in 2025,” he told reporters earlier this month at the Spacepower Conference in Orlando, Florida. “I want to be done with it, I’ll be honest with you. I’m impatient.”
ATLAS will provide the foundational software for a broader modernization program known as Space Com..

When Congress authorized the creation of the Space Force in December of 2019, the service’s leadership viewed its small size as an asset.
Gen. Jay Raymond, its inaugural chief of space operations, likened the newest military branch to a startup company, telling lawmakers the service would leverage its size to move fast and stay nimble.
“We are establishing a Space Force that is lean, agile and mission-focused,” Raymond said in a March 2020 House Armed Services Committee hearing.
Since then, the service’s budget hasdoubled to around $30 billion in fiscal 2025, and today’s leaders have called for even more resources in the coming years to strengthen the military’s defenses against adversaries in space, build an arsenal of offensive-capable systems and take on new missions.
“That budget is going to need to double or triple over time to be able to fund the things we’re actually going to need to have,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Defense ..