The Pentagon spent a week telling the space industry what to build

Huntsville, and a list of what the military wants

The Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, is not where most people look for space news. This week it was the centre of it.

Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of US Space Command, used the stage on Aug. 12 to publish his command’s ranked list of capability gaps for 2029 through 2033 [1]. Two items sit at the top. The first is what he called integrated space fires, meaning the ability to produce military effects against another country’s satellites. The second is countering a proliferated low Earth orbit constellation, which is a network of hundreds or thousands of small satellites working as one system [1].

“This isn’t just a wish list. It’s a clear demand signal,” Whiting said [1].

He meant that literally. The list is addressed at companies, government labs and research firms, and it tells them where to point their engineers. His worry about big constellations is that the architecture the US relies on for communications and missile warning is available to everyone else too. Picking off one satellite at a time from a network of thousands, he said, is “not going to be a winning hand” [1].

The money behind the list is less settled. Gen. Michael Guetlein, who runs the Golden Dome missile-defence programme, told the same symposium on Aug. 11 that it holds $22.5 billion and has already committed 95% of it [2]. That initial money came through a special budget package rather than the Pentagon’s regular annual budget, and that route is now uncertain. If Congress cannot agree a replacement for 2027, Guetlein said, “there is no funding” [2]. He puts the programme’s full cost at roughly $185 billion.

Space Command is physically moving to Huntsville as well. A 64-acre site at Redstone Arsenal has been cleared and more than 100 staff have already relocated [3]. The permanent building is due in 2031, with the full workforce of about 1,800 moving in the year after [3]. The Pentagon’s 2027 budget request includes $951 million for the move [3].

What actually got bought

Around the symposium, the contracts landed.

Rocket Lab took $397 million from the Space Force to build what it calls Flatellites: flat, stackable satellites carrying sensors to track moving airborne targets [4]. The flat shape exists for one reason, which is fitting more spacecraft into a single rocket. It is the company’s largest US defence award this year, and it brings to $943 million the four major US defence contracts it has announced since January [4].

The Space Force also split $60 million five ways, giving $12 million each to Amazon Leo for Government, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab and York Space Systems [5]. Their job is to prove that satellites from different makers can plug into the Space Data Network, the military’s planned mesh of communications satellites in low orbit. SpaceX won a $2.29 billion contract in May to build that network’s core [5]. Standard interfaces, said Col. Ryan Frazier, create “a clear runway for any capable and innovative company to compete” [5].

Impulse Space had $28 million added to an existing contract for two more Mira spacecraft, taking the total to about $62.8 million [6]. Mira can change orbit quickly using chemical thrusters, and the Space Force wants to test putting something where it is needed at short notice [6].

Astranis is a San Francisco company that has sold small geostationary broadband satellites to telecom operators. On Aug. 13 it unveiled one that does something else entirely [7]. Perceptor uses the same satellite body but carries sensors to inspect and shadow other spacecraft in the geostationary belt, about 36,000 km up. “There are blind spots that will be used against us if not eliminated,” said co-founder John Gedmark, who described it as a dual-use platform [7].

The Defense Innovation Unit and the Space Development Agency also picked three companies, D-Orbit, Firefly Aerospace and Katalyst Space, to study deorbit-as-a-service [8]. That means catching dead satellites that were never built to be caught, and dragging them down. Katalyst has the most direct test running. Its Link vehicle launched on July 3 to grab NASA’s ageing Swift observatory and raise its orbit [8]. Link hit attitude-control trouble in late July and was recovered with new flight software [8].

Allies are part of the architecture now

On Aug. 10 a Japanese H3 rocket carried a 10,800-pound navigation satellite, QZS-7, toward high orbit on the rocket’s ninth flight [10]. Bolted to that Japanese spacecraft was an American military sensor built by MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory [9].

It is the second of two under a programme the two governments agreed in 2020. The sensor now feeds the US Space Surveillance Network from a vantage point over the Indo-Pacific [9]. A US military payload, on a Japanese government satellite, on a Japanese rocket, in a US surveillance picture.

The pattern runs past hardware. NASA formally invited India’s space agency to join its Moon Base programme at a meeting in Bengaluru this month [19]. South Korea named a 2030 Moon landing as one of seven national technology projects [20].

The machines are changing shape

You can see the same pull inside company order books.

Intuitive Machines is best known for landing on the Moon. It disclosed a $600 million order for three commercial geostationary communications satellites, and it now has more than 80 spacecraft under contract [11]. Among them are 18 small satellites for the Space Development Agency’s missile-defence work, ordered through prime contractor L3Harris [11].

NASA is doing the same thing on the civil side. Its next batch of commercial Moon missions asks for a near build-to-print lander rather than a bespoke one, so the same design can be produced repeatedly [12]. The point is “no longer building bespoke landers for each individual mission,” said Intuitive Machines chief executive Steve Altemus, but raising the production rate [12]. The follow-on contract these companies are bidding for is worth up to $10 billion over ten years [12].

A SpaceNews analysis this week named the design consequence plainly. Now that a rideshare seat costs around $7,000 a kilogram, weight is no longer the ruling constraint on a satellite [13]. What limits it instead is how much surface area it can unfold once it arrives. Antennas, solar panels and radiators all need area, and every watt of power eventually becomes heat that has to be shed [13].

Elsewhere this week

SpaceX launched two Falcon 9 rockets 38 minutes apart on Aug. 15, from opposite coasts, beating its own record by 27 minutes [14][15]. The first carried eight satellites for Globalstar from Cape Canaveral. The second was a classified Space Force mission, USSF-366, from Vandenberg [14]. Both boosters landed, one on its 14th flight and one on its 18th [14]. That brought the year’s Falcon 9 tally to 96, about three-quarters of them Starlink [14].

New research on 6,700 launches since 1960 put numbers on how far that lead now runs [16]. Sending a kilogram to orbit costs about $3,225 in the United States, $5,287 in Japan, $5,809 in China, $6,682 in Russia and $9,897 in Europe [16]. The authors describe Europe as stuck between depending on cheaper American rockets and paying about three times as much for its own [16].

NASA leadership toured Idaho National Laboratory on Aug. 7 to inspect the reactor for SR-1 Freedom, a nuclear-electric propulsion demonstration [17]. A 20-kilowatt reactor would power an electric engine to Mars, carrying small helicopters modelled on Ingenuity, with launch planned for late 2028 [17]. Administrator Jared Isaacman said the visit “absolutely” raised his confidence in the date [17].

He also said he is “extremely confident” that Artemis 3 flies in 2027 [18]. Stacking of the Space Launch System rocket has begun at Kennedy Space Center, with four of ten booster segments in place [18]. Artemis 3 is a three-launch sequence, all in Earth orbit. A Blue Origin test lander goes up first, then the crewed Orion to dock with it, then a SpaceX Starship as a second docking target [18]. The first crewed landing is now Artemis 4, planned for 2028 [18].