“A lot of the challenges we face in space are big data problems,” says Gen. John Raymond, who is dual-hatted as commander of Space Command and Air Force Space Command.

Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson hopes that his LauncherOne airborne launch system’s capability to rapidly launch smallsats “will be a deterrent to an enemy state, that is to not attack satellites in the first place.”

When new entities fail, it’s most often due to the fact they don’t do what they do better than their competition (differentiated value proposition is the business term) and they lack investment in talent and technology. But there are other challenges.

“GPS III SV02 is the newest generation of GPS satellites designed and built to deliver positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) information with three times better accuracy, and up to eight times improved anti-jamming capability than its predecessor.”

“Everybody is watching SMC right now,” says Chris Beres of LinQuest, which has secured a new contract to help the Air Force with its SMC 2.0 revamp.

“The external and internal communication regarding [DoD] smallsat strategy is not consistent and not clear,” Carissa Christensen, CEO of Bryce Space and Technologies, said wryly.

Air Force Space Command’s ‘Unified Data Library’ combining DoD and commercial SSA data will be open to allied governments.

Large networks of small, cheap satellites derived from commercial technology would be harder for China or Russia to kill than a handful of expensive, exquisite military-unique birds. But who gets to build it?

Navy Research Lab’s LARADO (Laser-sheet Anomaly Resolution and Debris Observation) project conjures images of a Wild West cattle drive, and in a way that is apropos as space scientists have long been attempting to wrangle better estimates of the population of on-orbit debris.