Private Space Pilots Ace Secret Inspection Drilling Program For US Space Force

Global militaries frequently blast satellites into orbit to shadow rival space vehicles and study their technical capabilities. However, scaling up this highly dangerous reconnaissance work is a complex challenge that military leaders increasingly hand over to the private commercial sector. To prove they can handle the workload, two independent aerospace startups just wrapped up a highly complex orbital game of tag for the United States Space Force.

The successful mission involved engineering teams from True Anomaly and Rocket Lab. Last week, the two companies completed a rapid rendezvous operations test that looked like an elite pilot exercise straight out of a military movie. Their two independent satellites met up in high orbit, driving close enough to photograph individual components on each other’s outer framing.

The military exercise, officially named Victus Haze, proved that private corporations can quickly inspect a newly deployed space vehicle immediately after it achieves orbit. Defense analysts view this capability as a strict necessity in a modern world where global superpowers like the United States, Russia, and China actively deploy specialized orbital weapons. Even Rogers, a military veteran who now runs True Anomaly, pointed out that China and Russia constantly push new hardware into the stars. He explained that the Space Force needs to monitor what those payloads can do, especially since the military currently faces noticeable gaps in its tracking network.

The high-speed drill began when Rocket Lab received a sudden notice to launch. The rocket team prepped and fired a specialized spacecraft named Puma into orbit just fifteen hours and forty-two minutes after getting the command. This quick turnaround is an incredible engineering feat, given that traditional military satellite launches usually require months of advance planning and tedious checklist reviews.

Once Puma reached orbit, a hunting spacecraft named Jackal, built by True Anomaly, was already floating in position to track it down. As a major component of the training program, the crew did not tell the tracking team exactly where Puma would enter orbit. The Jackal satellite had to rely entirely on its own onboard radar sensors to scan the darkness, identifying and locking onto its moving target from more than 2,000 kilometers away. The tracking craft then moved in close to fly tight circles around the target, snapping detailed photos of its hardware before gliding back to its original orbit path.

True Anomaly leadership noted that outside of standard NASA docking routines, this tracking run represents the most complex orbital intercept mission between two independent spacecraft in modern aerospace history. Matching paths with a target when both vehicles are screaming through space at 17,500 miles per hour requires flawless software engineering. Previous satellite inspection tests usually operated on much slower, multi-week timelines.

The two aerospace companies are already prepping for a fresh series of harder drills over the coming weeks. Future tests will feature evasive maneuvering tactics, where the Rocket Lab satellite will actively twist away to dodge True Anomaly’s tracking sensors. Rogers and a team of military experts founded True Anomaly in 2022 to build custom hardware and automated software specifically for the Space Force. The firm has already raised over 1 billion dollars in funding as it prepares to compete for contracts under the military’s 6.2 billion dollar Andromeda program.