The military routinely sends satellites to fly alongside rival vehicles and assess their capabilities, but the U.S. military increasingly sees expanding this type of reconnaissance as a challenge best addressed by the private sector.
That’s why two space startups, True Anomaly and Rocket Lab, last week completed a rendezvous mission for the U.S. Space Force so complex it looked like something out of “Top Gun.” Their two rival satellites met in orbit, close enough that one could capture images of the other.
The exercise, called Victus Haze, demonstrated the close inspection of a space vehicle shortly after its arrival in orbit, a necessity in a world where the United States, Russia and China are deploying new space weapons.
“China and Russia launch capabilities into space on a regular basis, and part of the Space Force’s job is to understand what those capabilities are.” true anomaly CEO Even Rogers, a veteran of the US military’s space efforts, he told TechCrunch. “Right now we have gaps in our collection capacity.”
The June mission saw rocket laboratorya rival to SpaceX in rocket construction that recently announced its acquisition of Iridium, launches a spacecraft called Puma just 16 hours and 42 minutes after receiving the warning, which is notable because most rocket launches take place months in advance.
A Jackal spaceship built by True Anomaly was waiting in orbit to intercept him. As part of the exercise, the company did not know where Puma would end up in space, but used onboard sensors to find and identify its target 2,000 kilometers away. The Jackal then flew close to the target (exactly how close it is classified) and orbited it, capturing images of different parts of the vehicle, before returning to its initial point in orbit.
True Anomaly’s CEO said that outside of NASA and the Space Force’s human spaceflight missions, “this is probably the most complex rendezvous and proximity operation between two spacecraft in modern history.”
Putting two spacecraft into orbit, where both move at speeds approaching 17,500 mph, is no easy task. Previous private demonstrations, such as those conducted by Northrop Grumman maintenance satellites or Astroscale’s search for orbital debris missions, operate on slower time frames.
And now things get interesting: The two companies are set to conduct new exercises in the coming weeks with increasing difficulty, which could include Rocket Lab’s Puma trying to evade True Anomaly’s Jackal and performing its own inspection maneuvers.
Founded in 2022 by Rogers and a group of former military space experts, True Anomaly planned to build both the hardware and software to enable the new tasks assigned to the US Space Force when it was created in 2019. After several years of development missions, last month’s demonstration began to make that vision a reality.
“That’s the secret ingredient to this company,” said Seth Winterroth, a partner at Eclipse Ventures who sits on True Anomaly’s board of directors. “It’s not about the architecture of a spacecraft, or a piece of software, or a certain set of payloads; it’s a deep understanding of what the tactics and doctrine are like in this area.”
True Anomaly has raised just over $1 billion, including a $650 million round in March. Now the company will look to compete for a number of task orders, particularly in the Space Force’s $6.2 billion Andromeda program, which is looking to the private sector for exactly this type of maneuverable reconnaissance.
“Flight heritage is everything, and demonstrated ability is what speaks loudest to these opportunities,” Rogers said.
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