The US Space Force announced Thursday it is partnering with two companies, Rocket Lab and True Anomaly, for a first-of-its-kind mission to demonstrate how the military might counter “on-orbit aggression.”
On this mission, a spacecraft built and launched by Rocket Lab will chase down another satellite made by True Anomaly, a Colorado-based startup. “The vendors will exercise a realistic threat response scenario in an on-orbit space domain awareness demonstration called Victus Haze,” the Space Force's Space Systems Command said in a statement.
This threat scenario could involve a satellite performing maneuvers that approach a US spacecraft or a satellite doing something else unusual or unexpected. In such a scenario, the Space Force wants to have the capability to respond, either to deter an adversary from taking action or to defend a US satellite from an attack.
Going Up to Take a Look
"When another nation puts an asset up into space and we don't quite know what that asset is, we don't know what its intent is, we don't know what its capabilities are, we need the ability to go up there and figure out what this thing is," said General Michael Guetlein, the Space Force's vice chief of space operations.
This is what the Space Force wants to demonstrate with Victus Haze. For this mission, True Anomaly's spacecraft will launch first, posing as a satellite from a potential adversary, like China or Russia. Rocket Lab will have a satellite on standby to go up and inspect True Anomaly's spacecraft and will launch it when the Space Force gives the launch order.
"Pretty sporty," said Even Rogers, cofounder and CEO of True Anomaly.
Then, if all goes according to plan, the two spacecraft will switch roles, with True Anomaly's Jackal satellite actively maneuvering around Rocket Lab's satellite. According to the Space Force, True Anomaly and Rocket Lab will deliver their spacecraft no later than the fall of 2025.
"If a near-peer competitor makes a movement, we need to have it in our quiver to make a counter maneuver, whether that be go up and do a show of force or go up and do space domain awareness or understand the characterization of the environment—what's going on?" Guetlein said.
Victus Haze is the next in a series of military missions dedicated to validating Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) capabilities. With these efforts, the Space Force and its commercial partners have shown how they can compress the time it takes to prepare and launch a satellite.
Last year, the Space Force partnered with Firefly Aerospace and Millennium Space Systems on the Victus Nox mission. The Victus Nox satellite was built and tested in less than a year and then readied for launch in less than 60 hours. Firefly successfully launched the spacecraft on its Alpha rocket 27 hours after receiving launch orders from the Space Force, a remarkable achievement in an industry where satellites take years to build and launch campaigns typically last weeks or months.
"We no longer have the luxury of time to wait years, even 10 or 15 years, to deliver some of these capabilities," Guetlein said in a discussion in January hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "A tactically relevant timeline is a matter of weeks, days, or even hours."
"Victus Haze is about continuing to break those paradigms and to show how we would rapidly put up a space domain awareness capability and operate it in real time against a threat," Guetlein said.
The Victus Haze mission is more complicated than Victus Nox, involving two prime contractors, two spacecraft, and two rocket launches from different spaceports, all timed to occur with short timelines "to keep the demonstration as realistic as possible," a Space Force spokesperson told Ars.
"This demonstration will ultimately prepare the United States Space Force to provide future forces to combatant commands to conduct rapid operations in response to adversary on-orbit aggression," Space Systems Command said in a statement.
Faith in Commercial Space
"This is a really significant operational demonstration that is really pushing the envelope on technology and demonstrates a lot of faith in the US industrial base," Rogers said.
"Fundamentally, this is about characterizing an unknown capability for the first time in low-Earth orbit," Rogers said in an interview with Ars. "There are a whole host of challenges that come with that, consistent coverage with communications, how do you track a maneuvering object in low-Earth orbit with limited space domain awareness capabilities, what’s the right level of autonomy and human interaction?"
True Anomaly's first two Jackal satellites launched on a SpaceX rideshare mission last month, but the company announced a few weeks later that the two satellites would be unable to complete their planned rendezvous demonstration. This would have been a precursor to the type of activity True Anomaly and Rocket Lab will demonstrate on Victus Haze.
Rogers said his company is working on two more demonstration missions that will fly before Victus Haze.
The military's Defense Innovation Unit awarded $32 million to Rocket Lab for its part of the Victus Haze mission. True Anomaly's contract with SpaceWERX, the innovation arm of the Space Force, is valued at $30 million. True Anomaly is contributing $30 million in private capital to help pay for the mission, bringing the total cost of Victus Haze to approximately $92 million. Space Safari, a division of Space Systems Command, oversees the entire project.
"We recognize the significant opportunity to leverage the commercial space industry’s innovations to counter China as America’s pacing threat," said Colonel Bryon McClain, Space Systems Command's program executive officer for space domain awareness and combat power. "The United States has the most innovative space industry in the world. Victus Haze will demonstrate, under operationally realistic conditions, our ability to respond to irresponsible behavior on orbit."
"Once the build phase is completed the mission will enter several successive phases to include hot standby, activation, alert, and launch phases," the Space Force said. "While this is a coordinated demonstration, each vendor will be given unique launch and mission profiles."
True Anomaly's Jackal satellite, nearly as large as a refrigerator, will launch on a "rapid rideshare" mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida or Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, Space Systems command said. This will most likely be a rideshare launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Launching on a rideshare flight comes with different challenges than launching on a dedicated rocket, as the Victus Nox mission did last year.
True Anomaly says it could get its satellite out of storage and integrate it with a rocket in 12 to 84 hours, depending on the flight cadence of the launch provider. After the launch of True Anomaly's Jackal, the Space Force will give Rocket Lab a 24-hour call-up to launch its satellite, similar in size to True Anomaly's spacecraft, on an Electron rocket from New Zealand or from Virginia. Rocket Lab's launch must be precisely timed to allow its satellite to rendezvous with True Anomaly's spacecraft in orbit.
"Victus Haze builds on Rocket Lab’s proven track record of delivering launch and spacecraft solutions that enable advanced missions on accelerated timelines," said Peter Beck, Rocket Lab's founder and CEO, in a statement. "The ability to design, build, launch, and operate a spacecraft within one streamlined team is rare and will deliver unparalleled speed and value to the nation."
Getting to this point in shortening the time it takes to launch a satellite has not been easy. The military's Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) program had similar goals in the 2000s and 2010s but was more focused on replenishing or replacing capability, not responding to threats in space, Guetlein said.
Since then, commercial companies have developed state-of-the-art capabilities of their own. More advanced technology is available to the Space Force at a lower cost. "It was too expensive at the time," Guetlein said.
Now, the bigger challenge is changing the culture of the Space Force and its commercial partners. Things like regulatory approvals, safety paperwork, and airspace clearances need to go faster.
"Tactically responsive space is not about the hardware," Guetlein said. “It's not about the satellite; it's not about the sensor; it's not about the rocket. It's about the mindset. It's about the culture.”
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
