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For many years, the promise of a faster and more responsive launch capability has seduced military strategists who’ve looked for tactics to get satellites to orbit quickly in response to adversary threats or intelligence demands.
With help from congressional advocates, the U.S. Space Force is embarking on recent initiatives to compress mission timelines that typically take months or years to weeks and even days.
One such effort is Victus Nox, a mission the Space Force awarded to Firefly Aerospace and Millennium Space Systems last 12 months. The businesses on Aug. 30 announced they’re officially on “hot standby,” meaning that the Space Force expects the satellite and the rocket to be ready for launch anytime inside the following six months.
Upon receiving an alert, the businesses may have a 60-hour window to move the payload to Firefly’s launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, fuel the vehicle and integrate the payload with the rocket. Then the Space Force will issue one other notice with the ultimate orbit requirements, giving Firefly just 24 hours to update the trajectory and guidance software, encapsulate the payload, transport it to the pad and stand able to launch at the primary available window.
Nevertheless this seems, it should provide beneficial lessons.
With $60 million budgeted for the following two years for responsive launch, the Space Force and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) are kicking off recent projects to maintain the industry engaged. They’re asking corporations to check a scenario where China, for instance, deploys an anti-satellite weapon in space — and the U.S., in response, launches a sensor satellite to examine and characterize the Chinese spacecraft.
The U.S. would want to perform this mission in an “operationally relevant timeline, and frequently, which means about 24 hours,” said Lt. Col. MacKenzie Birchenough, who oversees the responsive launch program at Space Systems Command.
The Space Force in late August announced a Tactically Responsive Space Challenge, with bids due Sept. 28. Chosen proposals will receive Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts of as much as $1.7 million.
DIU, around the identical time, rolled out a separate solicitation for a responsive space mission named Victus Haze, with proposals due Sept. 7.
‘Have to put real money into it’
Fred Kennedy, space industry executive and a former director on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has seen the military dabble with responsive launch initiatives for many years.
While at DARPA, Kennedy oversaw the agency’s responsive launch challenge, which led to 2020 with no winners, as not one of the launch providers could meet the timeline.
Kennedy also was involved within the 2007 standup of the Air Force’s Operationally Responsive Space Office. This congressionally mandated organization set lofty goals to speed up space missions using commercially available satellites and rockets.
“I’m a giant proponent of responsive launch,” he said. “It’s nice to see them talking about this again, but to maneuver beyond experiments into actual operations, they should put real money into it.”
Many corporations are “pleased to get SBIR money, they usually’ll go off and do honest, labor to clarify how sooner or later something like this could occur,” said Kennedy. On-demand missions like Victus Nox aren’t something the industry does in its industrial business, so the Space Force might want to determine the right way to procure these responsive services.
Firms like SpaceX and Planet can mass-produce satellites on demand. “So having those within the barn and able to go is a really doable thing,” said Kennedy. “But on the launch side, we’re just not there. We’ve been working on this problem for a really very long time.”
SpaceX definitely has demonstrated an ever-increasing launch cadence. “But nobody is taking a payload to Elon Musk and asking him to launch in a few days,” Kennedy said. “No one’s doing anything like that.”
Responsive launch is a worthwhile pursuit, he said, but “it’s still a little bit of a dream.”