The Space Foundation’s 39th annual Space Symposium wrapped up on April 11 after four days of collaborating, innovating, and educating. With a theme of “Accelerating Momentum and Unity,” the premier space industry event welcomed more than 10,000 attendees representing all sectors of the space community, including government entities and GovCons.
Taking place at The Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the symposium included an exhibit hall with more than 300 exhibitors presenting the latest in space-centric and -supportive inventions.
A bonus at the event this year: It overlapped with a rare space-based phenomenon. During the solar eclipse on April 8, symposium-goers dashed outside, donning protective glasses, to watch as the moon aligned itself with the sun.
First-ever Commercial Space Strategy
Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman unveiled the U.S. Space Force’s new strategy at 39th annual Space Symposium [Photo Credit: U.S. Space Force]
Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said military space operators are more comfortable with using commercially provided capabilities to augment the force’s capacity than using fully integrated commercial solutions.
“Effective integration will only come about with a common understanding of our priorities, the missions where we need help … evaluation criteria and clear definitions of terms to enhance that collaboration,” Saltzman said.
The strategy names eight mission areas where the Space Force is seeking commercial capabilities:
- Satellite communications
- Space domain awareness
- Space access, mobility, and logistics
- Tactical surveillance, reconnaissance, and tracking
- Space-based environmental monitoring
- Cyberspace operations
- Command and control
- Positioning, navigation, and timing
Sustainability in Space
One of the major announcements to come out of the symposium was NASA’s Space Sustainability Strategy.
The first part of the strategy sets six goals aimed at better understanding the risks — and ways to decrease them — from debris in the Earth’s orbit.
“We want to seek breakthrough improvements to sense and predict the space environment, explore new operational approaches, and identify cost-effective methods to limit debris creation,” NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said. After that, the space agency will begin investing in sustainability-enforcing technologies, such as orbital debris management, enhanced space situational awareness, traffic coordination, and environmental understanding.
NASA is also updating its internal policies regarding space debris. That effort includes more coordination with other federal agencies and government contractors on plans such as the Traffic Coordination System for Space that the Office of Space Commerce is working on.
Budget Brouhaha
Department of the Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall addresses budget uncertainty at 39th annual Space Symposium [Photo Credit: U.S. Space Force]
As a result, “we gave up half a year of modernization lead time,” Kendall said.
He pointed to the progress that China has made on the frontier, which puts America at risk. As of January, China had more than 900 satellites in orbit, more than half of which pose intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance threats to U.S. aircraft carriers, expeditionary forces, and air wings.
“It is possible, based on sheer numbers alone, to argue that China has achieved space superiority,” Kendall said. “Of course, there is a lot more to the military balance of power in space than numbers alone, especially publicly available numbers.”
Derek Tournear, director of the Space Force’s Space Development Agency, said the fiscal 2024 budget delays led the agency to in turn delay solicitation for systems in its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture of low-Earth orbit satellites. The agency had requested a budget increase of almost 50% year-over-year. “Without knowing exactly where that budget was going to land, we couldn’t plan effectively on what to do in [2024] so that was a big impact,” Tournear said.
In an effort to reverse the damage, Defense Department Secretary Lloyd Austin approved the Department of the Air Force to initiate two programs using a new quick-start authority that lets the agency get started “without having to wait for up to two years for new authorizations and appropriations,” Kendall said. Details on those programs will be released soon.
All Systems Go (Forward)
Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of Space Command, announced that the Capability Assessment and Validation Environment (CAVE), a modeling and simulation tool, has achieved minimum viable capability.
“CAVE is our modeling and simulation laboratory, which enables us to perform analysis on warfighting, on plans [and] on campaigning,” Whiting said. “We’ll use that to derive better ways of deterring and planning to conduct operations for a war that’s never happened, and a war we don’t want to happen.”
Meanwhile, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) plans to move from using large satellites to smaller ones, citing the greater resiliency of constellations of systems.
The first phase of this “proliferated architecture” is scheduled to start next month with the launch of NROL-146. It “will be the first launch of an actual operational system,” said Troy Meink, NRO’s principal deputy director.
“These variations in launch opportunities help us both from a cost perspective, but they also give us a lot of flexibility,” Meink added. “The significant decline in the cost to entry for launch has not only opened the market for new commercial space … but it has made new architectural approaches possible for us.”
Like space itself, the possibilities for this frontier seem endless. We can’t wait to see what develops at next year’s symposium!