The United States Air Force is entrusting some of its orbital reconnaissance missions to commercial space companies. TechCrunch reports that True Anomaly and Rocket Lab completed a drill last week called Victus Haze, with one of the satellites performing close imaging of the other after two satellites were in orbit.
16 hours to launch.
One of the priorities of the mission was to validate the rapid response capacity. During the June exercise, Rocket Lab launched a spacecraft called Puma within 16 hours and 42 minutes of notification. This rhythm is significantly faster than the launch process, which usually requires several months in advance.
True Anomaly's Jackal satellite is pre-positioned to intercept and identify targets. According to the company, with no prior knowledge of Puma's orbital position, Jackal relied on a airborne sensor to discover and confirm the target approximately 2,000 kilometres away, then approached the target and orbited around it, photographed different parts of the spacecraft and returned to its original orbital position.
The drill is aimed at the orbital proxies.
The exercise demonstrated a closer orbital detection capability to the operational requirements, i.e. the identification and close observation of the target was completed shortly after the target was in orbit. It was mentioned that such missions were receiving attention from the United States military in the context of the continued deployment of new space capabilities in the United States, Russia and China.
True Anomaly CEO Even Rogers stated that the United States Air Force needed to know more quickly about the capabilities of other countries to launch into space, and that there were still gaps in existing reconnaissance techniques. He also stated that, in addition to NASA and the Air Force manned missions, this could be one of the most complex close encounters and accompanying operations in modern history.
Follow-up testing and order competition
Both companies are ready to continue their more difficult exercises in the coming weeks. Possible scenarios include Puma trying to circumvent Jackal ' s proximity, or Puma executing the inspection action in turn.
True Anomaly was founded in 2022 by a number of former United States military space project personnel with the objective of providing the relevant hardware and software capabilities for the United States Air Force, established in 2019. The company completed $650 million in financing in March this year, and the cumulative financing has exceeded $1 billion.
Upon completion of the on-orbit demonstration, True Anomaly will then seek additional task orders, focusing on the $6.2 billion Andromeda project of the United States Air Force. The project is aimed precisely at the private sector for the acquisition of mobile orbit detection capabilities.