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.
Tetra-1 is manifested on the U.S. Space Force rideshare mission USSF-44, which was awarded to SpaceX in February 2019.
Tetra-1 was the first project awarded in 2018 by the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center Space Enterprise Consortium.
The U.S. Space Force will start accepting applications from current military service members on May 1 for a 30-day period.
U.S. Space Force leaders are aware of concerns about the sufficiency of the 30-day application window.
Service members who transfer to the U.S. Space Force must make a two-year commitment beginning in September.
Chief Master Sgt. Roger Towberman was sworn in as the top enlisted leader of the U.S. Space Force on April 3.
The U.S. Space Force cannot finalize its recruiting strategies and other planning until they have an estimate of volunteer numbers.
The U.S. Space Force has not yet determined what the enlisted ranks will be called or what uniforms members will wear.
Only service members who inform their leadership chain of command can apply to transfer to the U.S. Space Force.
Towberman served in the Air Force for 30 years before becoming the senior enlisted adviser of U.S. Space Command and the Space Force.
The application window for transferring to the U.S. Space Force is entirely voluntary.
The U.S. Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center plans to send the Wide Field of View satellite to geosynchronous Earth orbit no earlier than August 2021.
The STP-S28 experiments will be used by the U.S. Space Force to develop its future space architecture.
The $500,000,000 GPS 3 satellite will be stored at Lockheed Martin’s Astrotech processing facility in Florida until the Space Force sets a new launch date.
The U.S. Space Force delayed a GPS satellite launch from Cape Canaveral by two months to avoid health risks to launch personnel.
The U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center awarded Space Micro a $3,000,000 contract for a laser communications terminal designed to transmit data at 100 gigabits per second.
Under the $3,000,000 Space Force contract, Space Micro will deliver an engineering model of a laser communications terminal developed for commercial geostationary satellites in late 2021.
A report to Congress due 2020-03-31 recommending changes to the acquisition process and organization for Space Force programs has been completed and is awaiting final senior leader reviews before submission to Congress.
The goal is to transfer 23 Air Force units and 1,840 Air Force billets located at bases in Colorado, California, Nevada, Ohio, New Mexico, and Maryland from the Air Force into the Space Force within the next three to six months as of 2020-03-31.
The U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center reached an agreement with Raytheon on 2020-03-31 to replace the hardware used in the next-generation ground control system for the GPS constellation by 2022-04-01.