DENVER ― The Space Force is pumping another $4.4 billion into its contracting pool for next-generation satellites to keep eyes on the heavens, bringing the previous ceiling for awards up from $1.8 billion to $6.2 billion. The service on Monday announced the plan to bolster its new Andromeda space-based space domain awareness program, explaining that…
Using MIRI (Mid Infrared Instrument) on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team led by former MPIA (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany) PhD student Sebastian Zieba (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, USA) and Laura Kreidberg, MPIA Director and study PI (principal investigator), investigated the surface composition of…
WASHINGTON ― The Space Rapid Capabilities Office (Space RCO), in partnership with the Space Force’s innovation arm SpaceWERX, has awarded three small companies contracts worth $3 million each to develop new radar warning receivers to equip future highly maneuverable satellites in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO). The awards to Assurance Technology Corporation, Raptor Dynamix and Innovative…
WASHINGTON ― Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman has taken to his bully pulpit to urge incremental development of new Space Force kit, calling on acquisition program offices to focus first on speedy delivery of “minimum viable capabilities.” While technically he hasn’t the power of the purse ― acquisition authority flows through the civilian…
The race to secure electricity for AI models has reached new heights: Meta has signed an agreement with the startup Overview Energy that could see a thousand satellites beam infrared light to solar farms that power data centers at night. In 2024, Meta’s data centers used more than 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity—roughly enough to power…
I’ve always wondered if this story about you is true, that the reason we have NASA’s picture of the whole Earth came from you doing psychedelics on a roof one day. Yeah, I was in San Francisco and bored. And one of the things you did with boredom at that time was drop some acid…
new video loaded: The Prophet of Silicon Valley transcript Back transcript The Prophet of Silicon Valley Stewart Brand, an author and visionary, deeply influenced the internet era from the 1960s onward. Yet the systems he inspired have become fundamentally unintelligible to their creators. The Opinion columnist Ezra Klein explores the tension between Brand’s “how to”…
Launch may capture headlines, but in today’s space domain, it’s what rides those rockets that matters most. Satellites are increasingly central to US military planning, powering communications, enabling missile warning and tracking, and supporting a more distributed, resilient force. This new eBook from Breaking Defense brings together reporting from Theresa Hitchens on the programs, technologies…
WASHINGTON — The Space Force has quietly tapped a dozen companies to bring to fruition a key element of President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense shield: space-based interceptors (SBIs), which the service expects should be ready for demonstration in as little as two years. In a press release today, the Space Force revealed that…
The Black Sea Comet -01 43’ High Speed Interceptor is pictured on the docks outside the 2026 Sea Air Space conference at Maryland’s National Harbor. (Daniel Woolfolk / Breaking Defense) The MQ-9B SeaGuardian is seen here during the Sea Air Space conference at Maryland’s National Harbor. (Daniel Woolfolk / Breaking Defense) A view of the…
