U.S. Space Force
Every Cosmic Herald story on U.S. Space Force — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
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Military Space
Trump Signs Order to Create a U.S. Space Academy
A new executive order tasks a NASA-chaired commission with designing, in just 120 days, a federal academy meant to train engineers, operators, and future Space Force Guardians.
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Military Space
Space Force Honor Guard Debuts Its First Original Ceremonial Uniform
Seven years after standing up, the Space Force Honor Guard has traded its borrowed Air Force dress for a uniform of its own, unveiled publicly at the Freedom 250 Grand Prix in Washington, D.C.
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Military Space
Space Force Stands Up Its First Squadron Built to Both Listen and Jam
The newly activated 1st Electromagnetic Warfare Squadron pairs a decades-old signal-detection system with a brand-new mobile jammer, staffed largely by Air National Guard veterans who transferred into the Space Force last fall.
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Military Space
Space Force and Japan Complete Bilateral Space-Watch Program With QZS-7 Launch
The U.S. Space Force and Japan finished a two-satellite space-surveillance partnership as QZS-7 lifted off August 10 carrying a second American sensor that now watches geosynchronous orbit over the Indo-Pacific.
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Military Space
Space Force Spreads $60 Million Across Five Companies to Keep Its New Satellite Network From Having a Single Point of Failure
Amazon, Lockheed, Northrop, Rocket Lab, and York each pocket roughly $12M to prove their satellites can talk to a backbone SpaceX is building — and to each other.
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Military Space
Vulcan Launches First National Security Mission, Carrying Navigation Satellite Meant to Backstop GPS
ULA's Vulcan rocket flew its debut national-security mission on August 12, 2026, delivering the Air Force's experimental NTS-3 satellite toward geosynchronous orbit to test jam-resistant GPS backup technology.
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Military Space
Golden Dome Gets Real Deadlines: Interceptor Ground Tests by Year-End, Orbital Flight Demos in 2027
The Pentagon has put firm dates on Golden Dome's hardest problem: space-based interceptor ground tests by end of 2026, two orbital flight tests in 2027, and an intercept demo in 2029 — with up to $3.2 billion spread across 12 companies and Gen. Michael Guetlein holding the program to a falsifiable clock.
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Military Space
Space Force Splits $615 Million Among Rocket Lab and Two Others to Track Airborne Threats From Orbit
Space Systems Command handed Rocket Lab $397 million to build orbital jet-tracking satellites for launch on its still-unflown Neutron rocket, part of a $615 million multi-vendor push to watch the skies from space instead of AWACS planes.
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Military Space
True Anomaly's Jackal Spacecraft Pulls Off the First In-Space Chase of an Actively Evading Satellite
In a Space Force demo, True Anomaly's autonomous Jackal-0004 tracked, planned, and closed to 10 km of a dodging Rocket Lab satellite in under an hour of decision-to-intercept time.
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Military Space
SpaceX Launches Classified NROL-95 Spy Satellite for the NRO
A veteran Falcon 9 booster flying its seventh mission delivered a secret NRO payload to orbit before sticking a pre-dawn landing at Cape Canaveral's Landing Zone 2.
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Military Space
SpaceX Lands $1.6 Billion Space Force Deal to Launch 18 Rockets for Airborne-Threat Tracking Satellites
Space Systems Command awarded SpaceX two task orders worth $1.6 billion for 18 Falcon 9 launches by end of 2027, carrying satellites meant to track airborne threats and feed targeting data to U.S. forces in near-real time.
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Military Space
GAO: Space Force Doesn't Know How Many Guardians It Actually Needs
A new GAO report finds the Space Force filled only 75% of its identified FY2025 positions and has no standardized way to calculate how many Guardians it actually requires — a gap opening just as the service plans to roughly double in size.
