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
Schiess Confirmed as Third Chief of Space Operations as Saltzman Prepares to Hand Over Command
The Senate confirmed Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess as the Space Force's third Chief of Space Operations, with a Sept. 3 ceremony at Joint Base Andrews set to formally end Gen. Chance Saltzman's nearly four-year tenure.
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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.
