The U.S. Space Force (USSF) is the space service branch of the U.S. Department of Defense, established in December 2019. Its primary role is to organize, train, and equip space forces to protect U.S. and allied interests in space by ensuring space superiority. The USSF manages space launch operations, satellite operations, space environment surveillance, and satellite defense, and partners with organizations like NASA on space domain awareness and planetary defense. Key areas of focus include missile warning, satellite communications, and positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services.
All verified mentions of this organization in source documents.
Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting is currently the commander of the Space Force’s Space Operations Command.
Following stage separation, Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters will land on SpaceX’s Landing Zones 1 and 2 (LZ-1 and LZ-2) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The U.S. Space Force announced 2023-07-24 that it selected 16 companies to compete for low Earth orbit satellite services contracts.
The US Space Force maintains the official satellite catalog.
The US Space Force makes orbital parameters for most satellites available.
The US Space Force assigns a number and a COSPAR designator to each known satellite.
The Space Force is using a software platform developed by Anduril Industries to integrate data from a decades-old network of space surveillance sensors.
The Space Force has awarded Anduril $10,500,000 in Small Business Innovation Research contracts for the company’s Lattice networking software.
All three Lane 2 winners will be eligible for up to $100,000,000 per year in funding to pay for military-unique requirements such as having both East and West Coast launch sites, vertical integration facilities, and providing the Space Force access to their commercial launch data.
Parsons has integrated payloads for missions including the U.S. Space Force’s Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF)-5 communications satellite and the joint NASA/U.S. Geological Survey Landsat 9 Earth observation satellite.
The Space Force initially planned to award five-year contracts to two Lane 2 providers but later decided to support a third provider for national security and economic reasons.
The Space Force estimates it could launch as many as 88 missions in the 2027–2032 timeframe.
Northrop Grumman selected Trident Systems in March to provide processing and storage electronics for 14 missile-detecting satellites Northrop Grumman is producing for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency.
SpaceX targeted Friday, 2023-07-14 at 12:40 a.m. ET (4:40 UTC) for a Falcon 9 launch of 54 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida.
SpaceX scrubbed the Starlink 5-15 mission forty seconds before liftoff on Friday, 2023-07-14 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The Senate Armed Services Committee in its version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act directs the Space Force to add a third provider in Lane 2 of NSSL Phase 3.
The Space Force increased the planned number of heavy-lift launch providers to be selected for NSSL Phase 3 from two to three.
The Space Force initially planned to award five-year Lane 2 contracts to two providers, modeled after the Phase 2 agreements with ULA and SpaceX.
Orbital Composites received a $1,700,000 U.S. Space Force Small Business Innovation Research contract through the SpaceWERX Orbital Prime program on 2023-07-13.
U.S. Space Force tracking data showed an object from the Zhuque-2 mission in a 431 by 461-kilometer Sun-synchronous orbit with an inclination of 97.3 degrees.