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An Alpha rocket for the Space Force’s Victus Knox mission stands on the launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
Firefly Aerospace
The name says it all: Victus Nox, or, translated from Latin, “conqueror of the night.”
It’s an experimental test of national security capabilities in space, and a high-stakes mission for a pair of burgeoning space companies – a crucial opportunity to prove they can handle the high-speed demands of the US Space Force.
The mission for the Army’s Los Angeles-based Space Safari team calls for a Millennium Space Systems-built satellite to be flown atop Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket — on remarkably short notice. to Boeing The mission for Millennium will be the 14th satellite launched so far, and for Firefly it’s only the third time its rocket has launched.
The challenge with this mission is its unique corporate requirements, Lt. Col. Mackenzie Birchenoff, commander of the Tactical Responsive Space Program within Space Safari, explained to CNBC.
“They don’t know when they will get the call,” she said. “In their view, things that normally happen over weeks or months are now basically broken down into minutes and days.”
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The Birchenough and Tactical Responsive Space Program, or TacRS, aims to work with spacecraft and rocket builders to establish “the ability to rapidly respond to orbit needs” on “very short timescales.”
Space Force is keen to continue pushing the boundaries of satellites and rockets with more TacRS missions, with a recent budget request naming $60 million over the next two years for the program.
Birchenov said Victus Nox is a “space domain awareness mission,” effectively meaning it’s a satellite intended to track other objects in orbit, as well as predict potential space threats.
“This whole mission is based on what the situation is going to be like in the real world, and making sure that this operational demonstration is as close to that as we can get,” she said.
An Alpha rocket for the Space Force’s Victus Knox mission stands on the launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
Firefly Aerospace
Firefly CEO Bill Weber acknowledged that at a time when the space business is increasingly privatized, “it’s not enough to call space commercialization a ‘response’.”
“We don’t have that capability right now for anything other than weapons systems. In space, we don’t have the capability within a near-term time frame to respond” to a national security threat or crisis, Weber said.
Space Force chose Firefly and Millennium to hold the Victus Nox in October, setting off a chain of events beginning with the build phase. The contract value of Firefly for the mission is $17.6 million, while the value of the Millennium contract has not been disclosed.
Next up is “Hot Ready,” where Millennium waits to receive a 60-hour window to fly the spacecraft from Los Angeles to the launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The mission then begins the recall phase, when the teams are on standby, and finally the launch phase, when the Space Force gives the companies 24 hours to launch the rocket and satellite from Earth.
Space Safari aims to build on the success of its latest responsive test mission, which flew in June 2021, as well as use the TacRS software to benefit and test more companies.
Space Safari sees this program as a “crawl-and-walk approach,” Birchenov said, with initial planning for the next mission in progress.
“We’re pushing the boundaries here and taking some risks,” she added.
Firefly Chance
Firefly originally planned to take on NASA’s third Alpha rocket launch mission, after the company It reached space with its second launch in October. Then came Space Safari, and Weber said his company had enough “flexibility” about the timing of the NASA mission to replace it with Victus Nox.
The Alpha Firefly rocket is 95 feet tall and designed to launch up to 1,300 kilograms of payload into orbit – at $15 million per launch. This places the Firefly in the medium-lift class of rockets, among small launchers such as the Rocket Lab Electron and “heavy” rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
Firefly completed a “steady full-duration fire” of its Alpha missile at Vandenberg, and the company is now taking final readiness steps. Victus Nox represents a distinct opportunity for Firefly, to demonstrate its willingness to fly national security missions as well as to use the launch to streamline its operations and move faster.
“Firefly is coming off this mission ready to go at a much faster pace,” Weber said. “When the Victus Nox launches, we intend to continue after that two months in a row. Alpha will be that projected schedule, of one metric ton rocket (fly) every two months.”
Weber said the company currently has customer commitments for seven additional flights on the Alpha after the Victus Knox.
Millennium momentum
The Victus Nox satellite is undergoing modification work.
Millennium space
According to Jason Kim, CEO of Millennium, the Space Safari team came to the company’s production line and said, “Hey, I want one of those spacecraft.”
“The idea is that if you take something off the production line, you don’t have to start from scratch to tactically deploy a responsive space capability to meet an urgent need or increase capabilities already in orbit,” Kim said.
Kim said Millennium retrofitted the Victus Knox satellite in eight months, a much shorter timeline than the typical 24- to 36-month process of starting an order from scratch.
The Boeing subsidiary is “very focused” on the national security aspect of the space market, Kim said, with Victus Knox as its latest project to deliver spacecraft “affordably on rapid schedules.”
Millennium has prioritized vertical integration, which Kim said helps the company “control the cost, schedule, and quality of those components” in the spacecraft it builds.
“We learn a lot from[Victus Knox]and the Space Force learns a lot from it,” Kim said.
Once the Space Force issues the call for a launch, Kim said his team will work with Firefly to fuel, process and integrate the spacecraft into the rocket. Once the spacecraft is in orbit, Millennium will inspect it within 48 hours to show it is operating properly and ready for operations.
“It’s this team, this collective team — Space Force, Millennium Space Systems, Firefly — against threats, we just don’t see it against each other,” Kim said. “We all have a common goal. And I think that went a long way to the success that we’re showing.”
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