Firm wins Space Force funding to provide an “aircraft carrier” in orbit
Ars Technica 2025-03-26
In recent years the US military has made much of a concept known as tactically responsive launch. This essentially means that if there is some rapidly developing threat in space—say an adversary takes out a key national defense satellite—the military would like the capability to rapidly fuel a satellite on Earth, mate it to a rocket, and launch it into space.
The US Space Force first demonstrated this tactically responsive capability with a launch on Firefly's Alpha rocket in 2023. As part of this "Victus Nox" test flight, a satellite was encapsulated into a payload fairing and mated to the rocket and completed all final launch preparations within 27 hours.
But what if there were an even faster way to respond? That's the vision behind a new, $60 million federal award to a new space company named Gravitics for a concept called an orbital carrier.