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Astrophotographer Ralf Vandebergh captured an image of the US Air Force's X-37B space plane in orbit. The reusable, uncrewed space vehicle, designated OTV-5, is on a secret testing mission since its launch in September 2017. From Vandebergh's post at Spaceweather.com: Images were taken through a 10 inch F/4,8 aperture Newtonian telescope with an Astrolumina ALccd 5L-11 mono CMOS camera. Tracking was fully manually through a 6x30 finderscope.

Strides Russia and China have made in space mean the United States can no longer take for granted its superiority in that domain said the nominee expected to head the nation’s Space Force and an independent Space Command said Tuesday.“China particularly has been watching” how the United States integrated space into all its military operations, Gen. John Raymond, currently the commander of the Air Force’s Space Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a Tuesday hearing. Testifying with Raymond was the nominee to head the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Christopher Scolese, who has a background as a nuclear Navy officer...

There’s a new member of an exclusive space race club this week. India announced that they successfully shot down a small satellite in low Earth orbit. But if you think this is a reason for anyone other than India to celebrate, you’ll probably want to reconsider that idea. (The Independent) India has shot down a live satellite in space as part of a successful test of new missile technology, prime minister Narendra Modi has announced.The operation, dubbed Mission Shakti, makes India part of a “super league” of nations to have achieved such a feat, Mr Modi said, alongside the...

U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham is urging President Donald Trump to consider Louisiana for the future headquarters of Trump’s proposed Space Force. The Republican congressman wrote a letter to the president , suggesting Louisiana was an "ideal location" because of its strong existing relationships with the military and NASA. Abraham, who is running for governor, says Space Force would "fit perfectly" at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City. He notes NASA's existing Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans has built components for the nation's space program for decades...

President Trump will seek to boost defense spending by $34 billion and slash welfare programs in a budget the White House plans to propose Monday. Trump wants to up Pentagon spending to $750 billion and put in place strict new requirements for welfare recipients, according to the Associated Press and other reports. He’s also going to ask for border-wall funding and money to establish his proposed Space Force branch of the military.

President Donald Trump signed Space Policy Directive-4 (SPD-4) today (Feb. 19), ordering the Pentagon to establish the Space Force as the sixth branch of the United States military, to go along with the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. But the Space Force still has a big hoop to jump through: Congress must approve the creation of any new military branch. The main goal of the Space Force is to secure and extend American dominance of the space domain, Trump and other White House officials have said. Such reasoning has drawn opposition from various quarters. "President Trump has...

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China said Wednesday it opposed the "weaponisation" of space as it criticised US President Donald Trump's orders to create a new command centre for controlling military space operations. "China has consistently proposed the peaceful usage of space, and opposes the weaponisation of space and a space arms race," said Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying at a press briefing. "We oppose even further turning space into the new battleground," she added. On Tuesday, Trump ordered the creation of "Space Command", a new organisational structure within the Pentagon that will have overall control of military space operations. SpaceCom, as it will...

In a Dec. 6 memo titled, "Space Development Agency Study Team Direction and Tasking," Griffin directed Fred Kennedy, director of DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, to lead a study team and come up with recommendations for the "implementation of the Space Development Agency. … The study team will "inventory the DoD space-based command-and-control capabilities, identify critical gaps, deficiencies and inefficiencies in our existing architectures and develop an agile responsive threat-driven architecture, associated infrastructure requirements and an acquisition construct," Griffin wrote. The decision to assign this task to Kennedy is not surprising given his space expertise and track record attracting commercial space...

Vice President Pence on Tuesday declined to rule out the idea of deploying nuclear weapons in space, saying that the current ban on their use is “in the interest of every nation” but that the issue should be decided on “the principle that peace comes through strength.” The new positioning comes as the Trump administration moves to potentially exit a major nuclear weapons pact with Russia and possibly bolster U.S. military operations in the heavens by forming a “Space Force.” Pence argued that the Space Force is critical for U.S. national security as China and Russia expand their presence in...

WASHINGTON — The status of proposals to create a separate branch of the U.S. military devoted to space will be the subject of the next meeting of the National Space Council on Oct. 23. Vice President Mike Pence, in an Oct. 12 tweet, said that the interagency group will discuss "progress made and next steps" on the formation of a Space Force, a plan formally announced by President Trump  at the council's last meeting in June. The president "has rightly called for the creation of a 6th branch of the Armed Forces to advance US dominance in space," Pence wrote. "#SpaceForce is...

President Trump raised eyebrows earlier this year when he announced plans to create a “Space Force,” which would become the sixth branch of the military. Vice President Mike Pence later announced in a speech that the branch was needed in order for the US to maintain military dominance in space. The proposed Space Force is estimated to cost $13 billion in its first five years. And despite some snickers among political observers, renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn’t think the Space Force is that crazy of an idea. But Tyson, one of the authors of “Accessory to War: The Unspoken...

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell speaks to audiences around the world and gets lots of questions. During  at the Air Force Association's annual symposium, Shotwell was thrown a question she said she had never heard before: "Would SpaceX launch military weapons?" "I've never been asked that question," Shotwell said somewhat surprised. Her response: "If it's for the defense of this country, yes, I think we would." The room packed with Air Force service members and military contractors burst into applause. They seemed impressed that SpaceX is one of the world's coolest companies and also...

The first estimates from the Air Force on the proposed new Space Force branch of the military put the cost at around $13 billion over 5 years. On Monday, The Associated Press obtained a memo dated Sept. 14 from Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, which called for “a lethality focused organization that will field space superiority capabilities.” “The President has clearly communicated his desire for a military department for space,” Wilson wrote. “Strategic competition with Russia and China is the focus of our approach.” The memo states that in its first year the Space Force would cost $3.3 billion. The...

The United States of America is THE dominant space power in the world. We have developed more different space rockets than any country, have launched more successful satellites to Mars, very hard to do, and have developed the most complex satellites in the world. This is why the 21st century has almost entirely been invented in the United States and with what we know, and can do, we continue to preserve our PAX Americana stopping any large military force from attacking the United States or their allies. Imagine a civilian world without: digital maps, global internet, real time cable tv,...

The Defense Department is moving ahead with previously announced plans to stand up a four-star U.S. Space Command as part of a broader effort to reorganize military space forces, Defense Secretary James Mattis said Tuesday at a joint news conference at the Pentagon with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford. Mattis said the new command will be funded with existing resources and staffed with existing personnel. Congress in the 2018 defense policy bill directed DoD to create a "sub-unified" Space Command under U.S. Strategic Command, but the Pentagon has proposed taking this a step further and...

“If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred. A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before. That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionize access to space.” --Elon Musk

THE American space agency is planning to send a spacecraft to a lump of metal in space worth quadrillions of dollars. The 200km-wide asteroid is currently orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter. It is made up of various precious metals such as iron, nickel and gold. Experts believe the iron alone in the rock would be worth $10,000 quadrillion – enough to cause the world’s economy, worth $73.7 trillion, to promptly collapse altogether.

The German government has “no plans or protocol” should first contact with aliens occur, according to a report by German daily Bild. The government considers such an event “extremely unlikely according to current scientific knowledge,” the Ministry of Economics said when responding to a question from Green MP Dieter Janecek. “Concrete cases that could have been the subject of bilateral or multilateral talks with other states are not known,” the ministry’s statement continued. While Germany might not have a plan for extraterrestrial visitors, the US is more prepared. Even before the establishment of a Space Force that US President Donald...

Ever since the Renaissance, the sciences have dealt human beings a steady stream of humiliations. The Copernican revolution dismantled the idea that humanity stood at the center of the universe. A cascade of discoveries from the late-18th to the early-20th century showed that humanity was a lot less significant than some had imagined. The revelation of the geological timescale stacked millions and billions of years atop our little cultural narratives, crumbling all of human history to dust. The revelation that we enjoy an evolutionary kinship to fish, bugs, and filth eroded the in-God’s-image stuff. The disclosure of the size of...