The Farrah Satellite At The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum

FARRAH Half-scale model of FARRAH satellite now hanging in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. FARRAH was built by Lockheed and launched into a low polar orbit in 1982 where it detected radar and other electronic emissions from the Soviet Union and other countries. Later FARRAH satellites operated until 2008. (credit: D. Day) Superstar in the Smithsonian: the FARRAH satellite by Dwayne A. Day Monday, July 30, 2026 At the beginning of July, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum reopened several galleries that had been closed for renovations for many years. Hanging from the ceiling in one of the newly reopened galleries is a half-scale model of a formerly top-secret signals intelligence satellite from the Cold War known as FARRAH. It was named after actress Farrah Fawcett, who rocketed to fame in the late 1970s after appearing on a poster in a swimsuit and then being cast as one of the angels in the popular TV show “Charlie’s Angels.” Two of these FARRAH satellites were built, starting in the early 1980s, with three more satellites of a much larger design also receiving the FARRAH designation. They were among the last in the family of Program 989 satellites that operated in low Earth orbit and primarily detected signals emitted from Soviet ground-based radars. Program 989 started in the early 1960s under a different designation and satellites continued to operate until 2008, with about three dozen launched over 30 years. Most of the satellites were about the size of a large suitcase with multiple deployed antennas from their sides. They were ejected from other satellites soon after those satellites reached their operational orbits. The last few FARRAH satellites were much larger, shaped like tuna cans, and initially scheduled for launch from the space shuttle but later shifted to a few Titan II launches before the program ended in the early 1990s. FARRAH The FARRAH satellite spun at 60 rotations per minute. The direction of rotation was away from this viewpoint, so that the dish antennas swept the face of the Earth. (credit: D. Day) The number of P-989 satellites launched per year was never high, peaking at four in 1968 and another four in 1969. After that, the launches dropped significantly. There was one launched in 1971, two in 1972, one in 1973, two in 1974, and then one each in 1976, 1978, and 1979. The satellites had code names like MABELI, RAQUEL, and URSALA (see “Big bird, little bird: chasing Soviet anti-ballistic missile radars in the 1960s,” The Space Review, December 14, 2020.) When first developed, they stored their collected signals on tape recorders and played them back over American ground stations. The data was analyzed over weeks or even months to determine the characteristics of Soviet radars. In the early 1970s, URSALA was modified to make it more useful to tactical forces, and the later satellites, such as FARRAH, incorporated a direct downlink capability so that they did not have to record their signals for later playback. They became intelligence assets that could provide near-real-time information to ground forces (see “Jupiter on the Space Shuttle and the Titan II: the FARRAH signals intelligence satellites,” The Space Review, March 16, 2026.) FARRAH The Living In Space Hall at the National Air and Space Museum contains many rockets and spacecraft, including a GAMBIT reconnaissance satellite (center back left) and an engineering test article of the Hubble Space Telescope (not visible to the right). (credit: D. Day) Snooping on signals FARRAH I was launched in 1982, deployed off the side of a massive HEXAGON photo-reconnaissance satellite and boosted into a higher orbit with a small rocket motor. It spun at greater than 50 revolutions per minute, sweeping its antennas across the face of the Earth. FARRAH II was deployed in 1984 off the side of the 19th HEXAGON satellite launched, the last HEXAGON to reach orbit (see “Little Wizards: Signals intelligence satellites during the Cold War,” The Space Review, August 2, 2021.) By the late 1970s they were being used by the United States Army as part of a relatively new program known as TENCAP, for Tactical Exploitation of National CAPabilities. The specific Army program was known as the Tactical ELINT Processor/Tactical Unit Terminal system, or TEP/TUT, which had a unit logo featuring King Tutankhamun. TEP/TUT was a system mounted in vans and trailers that could be deployed with Army units in places such as West Germany and South Korea. FARRAH and other satellites could detect Soviet mobile air defense radar emitters. The mobile radars would guide vehicle-mounted missiles to shoot down American planes and helicopters. The satellite data would be processed by the ground system and distributed to Army commanders. TENCAP was an increasingly expensive effort to bring “national level” intelligence collection systems that had previously served leaders such as the president, Pentagon and intelligence officials, to directly support troops in the field (see “From the sky to the mud: TENCAP and adapting national reconnaissance systems to tactical operations,” The Space Review, June 19, 2023.) FARRAH and similar satellites could fly over places such as Eastern Europe and nearly instantly provide useable intelligence to Army units in Germany. RAQUEL, URSALA, and FARRAH were all named for actresses (although URSALA was apparently a misspelling.) Soon after Ronald Reagan became president, an official briefed him on American intelligence satellites. The person in charge of Program 989 was concerned that he would have to rename the satellites if Reagan objected—this would be expensive, because the names were included in computer programs. But when Reagan saw the names he laughed and said that he knew those actresses, the names were fine (see “Stars in the sky: the top secret URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH satellites from the 1970s to the 21st century,” The Space Review, March 10, 2025.) The model hangs in the museum’s RTX Living in the Space Age Hall above a GAMBIT reconnaissance satellite and near several other military satellite mockups. Look up and you’ll see it. Dwayne Day is interested in hearing from anybody with more information on the FARRAH satellites. He can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net. Note: we are now moderating comments. 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Behind "Once Upon A Time In Space

Mir The Mir space station seen from the STS-79 shuttle mission in 1996. (credit: NASA) Behind Once Upon a Time in Space: James Bluemel on the human stories of spaceflight by Emily Carney Monday, July 20, 2026 Once Upon a Time in Space, a four-part documentary series that premiered on the BBC last year and is currently airing on US PBS stations, goes beyond providing a linear primer on human spaceflight from its mid-century origins to the present. Starting with its first episode, Once Upon a Time in Space delves into human spaceflight beginning with the Space Shuttle era, which yielded the first space travelers who truly looked like “America,” to the present, a time still characterized by continuing international partnerships in space but unfortunately dotted by political strife and wars. “Astronauts can sometimes feel a little bit otherworldly in that way, almost superhuman. But to try and capture that vulnerability and what makes people tick was important.” During the four episodes, filmmaker James Bluemel and his team, who also made the award-winning Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland and Once Upon a Time in Iraq documentaries, also interview many of the main principals of Shuttle-Mir—the program that formed “phase one” of what we now know as the International Space Station‚and showcase one lesser-known effort to keep the erstwhile Soviet-era space station aloft with a “passenger” model, predating current commercial spaceflight efforts by decades. The series gives viewers an atypical, bracing look at the last 50 years of human spaceflight through its participants—not limited to just astronauts—and through the eyes of an ever-changing world and economy. I recently caught up with Bluemel to discuss Once Upon a Time in Space, and its unique look at the last half-century of the ever-changing landscape of spaceflight and the world itself. Emily Carney: So, one of the cool things about this series is that there’s more of an emphasis on personal stories and narratives versus just archival materials. You see documentaries, and they have a lot of archival footage, but this has a lot of personal stories in it. Were there any particular interviews or personality showcases that fundamentally changed your understanding of an event, whether it was something on Challenger, Mir, Columbia, or anything from the Shuttle-Mir era? James Bluemel: I think the emphasis was on finding the human story behind the astronauts. And by doing that, that also requires you to look into their families and ask them to go into their attic and bring down some old home movie footage that they haven’t seen for ages either. All because you want to really capture the person, the human, and make that person very relatable. Astronauts can sometimes feel a little bit otherworldly in that way, almost superhuman. But to try and capture that vulnerability and what makes people tick was important. Take something like Challenger, where I’m very used to; I know the emotions that are attached to that disaster. You know it’s going to be incredibly sad when the documentary finally hits that. But I didn’t want to dwell on some of the shots that have been seen hundreds of times before, especially when I don’t have those people in the documentary. I’m talking about the families of some of the crew. But seeing it from Anna’s perspective: Anna Fisher, who had just become a mother, who had taken the risk, she rolled the dice, it worked out, she came back, she was safe…to see it through her eyes and for her to realize, actually probably for the first time, realize the kind of risk that she was taking as a mother, that was a new way of unlocking an emotion about Challenger, I thought. Fisher Anna Fisher suited up for training on a mockup of a modular section of the HST for an axial scientific instrument change out. (credit: NASA) Carney: So this series spans, I think, nearly seven decades of spaceflight history in just four episodes. That’s a lot of time. So how did you decide which moments deserved the most attention? And were there any pivotal events or things that you may have just reluctantly left out because they may not have fit the larger narrative? Bluemel: Yeah, you can’t tell everything in only a four-part series. So, I really focused on the relationship and the collaboration between America and Russia, through the beginnings of competition to tentatively working with each other to see if they could work together, to trying it out on the Mir, to eventually creating the ISS. So that was my spine. And if things didn’t fall into that story, then I could ignore them because I thought, well, that’s for a different story. But even so, you’re still throwing things, not including things because time doesn’t allow. “Perhaps lazily, I thought that MirCorp was a bit of a joke when I first read about it… But when you sit and you talk to them about actually what their goals were and what they were trying to achieve, you realize that they were visionaries. They were just 25 years too early.” There’s a really fascinating program in Russia in the very early days of the Mir…they got civilians to come over and buy a seat and were taken up to Mir. It was run by the Russian government. So, it really bridges the gap between the very first ideas of commercial space and still just because they need to put the money into this. Anyway, that was a good story. There was a Japanese journalist, the first journalist to go up into space and things like that. But I just didn’t have time to get all of them in. So there are stories that fall by the wayside. Carney: So, we talked a little bit about Shuttle-Mir. This series presents the arc of spaceflight as evolving from Cold War competition with Apollo, and then there’s international cooperation with Shuttle-Mir and the ISS later. But we know that history is rarely linear, especially in recent times. So how do you balance that hopeful narrative with the reality that geopolitical tensions have always shaped and even limited what’s possible in human spaceflight? Bluemel: I mean, that geopolitical story is threaded throughout the film. And so it culminates in the fourth film with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and other geopolitical problems, which have made space collaboration between America and Russia much more challenging, and might also eventually be the one that stops it from continuing in the future. What’s remarkable, I think, is that NASA and Roscosmos managed to navigate an incredibly difficult minefield of geopolitics and still create something that was an amazing success, one of the biggest achievements in human history, which is the International Space Station. It’s a testament to humans collaborating over the negative impacts of opposing ideologies and politics. It shows what people can do when they work together rather than fight each other. And for that, it’s an incredibly optimistic and hopeful symbol, I think, which is worth remembering, especially as we consider a future where that collaboration between Russia and America might not continue. Carney: In Once Upon a Time in Space, you’ve included astronauts, cosmonauts, trainers, family, and even entrepreneurs, rather than just focusing exclusively on astronauts or people who flew in space. So, was that an intentional effort to broaden really the public’s understanding of who, and what, actually makes a human spaceflight possible? Bluemel: Yes, it was. It was intentional because I wanted to get a more rounded understanding of what it takes to be an astronaut, and therefore, the families of astronauts can be very helpful for that. At the very beginning, astronauts were, I mean, they were incredibly…well, they were almost like super people, weren’t they? You had to score incredibly well on most things in order to become an astronaut. And most people don’t score incredibly well on all those things. So it really whittles down who can actually be an astronaut. As we move towards the present day and look towards the future, that ability for the normal person to get into space is becoming more and more possible and more and more likely. So, I think there’s an intentional showing that the gatekeepers of who says what type of person can come into space are a lot less powerful than they used to be back in the Sixties. Carney: Was there a moment during production when you found yourself unexpectedly rooting for somebody, or maybe reconsidering someone that you may have viewed differently previously? “I knew there was an International Space Station. I had no idea what the breadcrumb trail was in order to get us from a position of Cold War competition to creating this symbolic, unified multinational space station.” Bluemel: That’s a harder one because of all the research that goes on. I understand them quite well before I get them in the interview room. I suppose it’s the story of MirCorp, I think. Perhaps lazily, I thought that MirCorp was a bit of a joke when I first read about it, the idea that these venture capitalists want to buy a space station and turn it into a film studio, a hotel, and a destination. My initial thoughts were, oh, we should reach out to them. They sound funny. They sound quite wacky. I’m not the first person to think that: even at the time, they were called wacky and written off, I think, as being crazy. But when you sit and you talk to them about actually what their goals were and what they were trying to achieve, you realize that they were visionaries. They were just 25 years too early. The future that they imagined is beginning to happen now. It couldn’t have happened when they were doing it. And if that makes them wacky and stupid, then, well, I disagree. I think it makes them pioneers and visionaries, and I changed my opinion completely after meeting them. Carney: A lot of space documentaries revisit familiar milestones in spaceflight, such as the Apollo Moon landings, Challenger, Columbia, a lot of the things that really stick out in our memory. Sometimes audiences come away not having really learned much new. So what do you hope even long-time space enthusiasts and historians will discover in Once Upon a Time in Space that they may not have encountered before? Bluemel: For me, it was the story of how America and Russia began this long road of collaboration. I knew it happened. I knew there was an International Space Station. I had no idea what the breadcrumb trail was in order to get us from a position of Cold War competition to creating this symbolic, unified multinational space station. And I found that story fascinating and strangely untold, certainly in the mainstream. The fact that the people who took part and made it happen are still alive and could sit in the chair and tell me about it was, I think, the great value of this documentary. New episodes of Once Upon a Time in Space premiere on Tuesdays through August 4 at 9 pm Eastern. Check out your local PBS listings for more information. Emily Carney is a space historian and lives in Saint Petersburg, Florida. She is the author of Star Bound: A Beginner’s Guide to the American Space Program, from Goddard’s Rockets to Goldilocks Planets and Everything in Between, along with Bruce McCandless III.

"War Of The Worlds" 1950 With Edward R. Murrow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbkvlN6XyxQ

Past US Space Nuclear Power And Propulsion Programs

nuclear Extended stays on planetary surfaces will likely require nuclear power sources, to augment solar power systems and/or to provide emergency power. This artist’s impression shows a nuclear reactor providing power to a Moon base. (credit: Antares Nuclear) Atoms for space: Past US space nuclear power and propulsion programs by Dwyane A. Day Monday, July 13, 2026 The Nuclear Age and the Space Age were inevitably intertwined from the start. Missiles with nuclear warheads became rockets for launching spacecraft. Early US studies of satellites in the 1950s included a nuclear power source for the satellite. Because nuclear power was relatively compact and the United States was spending massive sums developing it in the 1950s, satellite designers began evaluating it for powering spacecraft. Rocket engineers also began considering nuclear power for propulsion as early as 1947. Nearly $20 billion in constant-year dollars has been spent over nearly seven decades on space nuclear power and propulsion systems. Although radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) used for outer planet spacecraft such as Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini are the most well-known nuclear systems, many other technologies have been studied, a few occasionally progressed to advanced testing, but rarely launched. According to one recent study, nearly $20 billion in constant-year dollars has been spent over nearly seven decades on space nuclear power and propulsion systems. This is a brief discussion of many of them. nuclear The NERVA A3 (also known as the NRX-A3) prior to a 1965 test. (credit: Dept. of Energy) Rover and NERVA (1955–1972) Chemical rockets are limited in the amount of thrust that they can produce, prompting engineers to consider more advanced forms of propulsion. In the mid-1950s, the United States initiated a program to develop nuclear propulsion for spacecraft with the expectation that it could be used for future human missions, particularly to Mars. The basic technology involved passing hydrogen through a very high temperature nuclear reactor, where it expanded and blasted out of the reactor at high velocity. There have been various proposals for this technology, which can theoretically produce thrust at much higher efficiency than chemical propulsion. By the 1960s, NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission jointly ran two main programs, a reactor technology development program named Rover, and a program to develop a flight capable nuclear rocket engine known as NERVA, for Nuclear Energy for Rocket Vehicle Application. nuclear The NERVA A3 (also known as the NRX-A3). (credit: Dept. of Energy) Under the Rover program, nuclear reactors were built at the Los Alamos Laboratory’s Pajarito Site and tested at very low power, then transported to the Nevada Test Site for higher power tests. Laboratory work also included developing and testing the fuel elements that powered the reactors. nuclear Relative size of the KIWI test engines. (credit: Dept. of Energy) Phase one of Project Rover was called Kiwi and entailed building and testing eight reactors between 1959 and 1964. Phase two, called Phoebus, involved advanced nuclear reactors. NERVA began in 1961 and by the mid-1960s progressed to hardware development tests in the Nevada desert. Rockets were fired in the desert, producing radioactive exhaust. The NERVA engine utilized a hot-bleed cycle in which a small amount of hydrogen gas was diverted from the thrust nozzle to drive the turbine that pumps fuel into the engine. NERVA reached an integrated system component demonstration readiness level. It did not result in a flight-ready or near-flight ready design. nuclear nuclear nuclear NASA envisioned using NERVA rocket engines for a variety of missions, including the Moon and Mars. (credit: NASA) At various points NASA planned on using NERVA as a rocket upper stage, a space ferry for lunar missions, and a propulsion stage for human Mars missions. A human Mars mission proposal made in 1969 would have used multiple NERVA engines that could be recovered in space for reuse. NASA produced extensive artwork depicting these various missions. However, after Apollo, none of these projects was approved and NERVA therefore had no dedicated mission. nuclear nuclear NASA future plans conceived of reusable nuclear upper stages that could be refueled in Earth orbit. At a time when simply making the nuclear rocket engine work was a challenge, this was a highly ambitious vision. (credit: NASA) Congress showed greater support for NERVA than the White House, but the program was eventually canceled by 1972, when its powerful patron chose not to seek reelection and President Richard Nixon wanted to use the money for the Pentagon. Rover and NERVA were collectively the most expensive space nuclear program pursued by the United States. Some of their radioactive test equipment remains quarantined in the desert even today, relics of a time when nuclear rockets seemed to many like the space propulsion technology of the near future. nuclear Orion was a series of studies for propelling a large spacecraft using nuclear explosions. It was considered for both civil and military missions. (credit: NASA) Orion (1955–1965) Stanislaw Ulam and Cornelius Everett, who had designed the H-bomb, conceived the nuclear pulse drive at Los Alamos in 1955. The Atomic Energy Commission, and later the US Air Force, sponsored studies of this technology under the name Project Orion. Even Orion’s designers acknowledged that it was a difficult project with limited chance of success. Orion would use nuclear explosions to propel a spacecraft. Nuclear bombs would be ejected aft of a spacecraft and explode some distance away. Propellant (water or wax) surrounding the bombs would be transformed into high-energy plasma and bounce off a pusher plate at the rear of the spacecraft and push it forward. These detonations would have to happen rapidly, approximately every second. Shock absorbers would reduce the substantial vibration caused by detonating nuclear weapons behind the craft. Although the plasma from the explosion would have a temperature of 80,000 kelvins, the impulse would be brief and theoretically only a tiny layer of the ablative pusher plate would sublimate after each explosion. The vehicle would be ground-launched from a remote location, propelled into space atop a nuclear pillar. It would not be kind to the surrounding landscape. In theory, the Orion design allowed vast payloads to be hurled to the planets. The Air Force was interested in developing an Orion into a type of space battleship, equipped with hundreds of nuclear weapons that could be fired at Earth or other targets (see “General Power vs. Chicken Little,” The Space Review, May 23, 2005.) A typical design had a payload of hundreds of tons, meaning no complex environmental recycling systems or lightweight structures or equipment would be required. The pusher plate was about one third of the weight of the spacecraft. In 1957, the project was transferred to the Air Force and produced small-scale demonstration tests involving conventional explosives detonated under a model suspended from a crane. The 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty banned atmospheric nuclear tests, essentially killing the program. Funding was eliminated entirely in 1965. Even Orion’s designers acknowledged that it was a difficult project with limited chance of success. nuclear A 1961 illustration of a nuclear-powered spacecraft. (credit: NASA) Systems For Nuclear Auxiliary Power reactor (1959–1971) In 1946, the Air Force’s Project RAND began studying Earth-orbiting satellites and the early studies assumed using nuclear reactors to power the satellites. At the time there was no other way to provide sufficient, long-lasting power to an orbiting satellite. nuclear The earliest studies of satellites included nuclear reactor power sources. This illustration is from a declassified mid-1950s report on using a satellite for reconnaissance. (credit: RAND Corp.) Over the next decade, the Air Force funded low-level study efforts of space nuclear reactors. Early spacecraft could use batteries for a short lifetime, but the eventual development of solar cells made nuclear reactors unnecessary. Nuclear reactors might have some utility for spacecraft, but they were not required for the vast majority of space missions. By the late 1950s, the Atomic Energy Commission began the Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power (SNAP) program to develop fission reactors and radioisotope generators for both terrestrial and space use. Radioisotope and reactor programs were given odd- and even-number designations, respectively. nuclear In December 1957, Disney aired an episode of its Disneyland program called “Mars and Beyond,” which featured a fleet of spacecraft carrying humans to Mars. They were powered by nuclear reactors and propelled by electric propulsion systems. The reactor can be seen at the bottom of the boom of the spaceships, which also featured large radiators for cooling. Although not practical, it was definitely cool. (credit: Disney) Starting in the 1950s, nuclear reactors were envisioned both for providing power to spacecraft, and in powering electric thrusters. In 1957, a Disney television episode featured a fleet of spacecraft (often referred to as “umbrella ships”) heading to Mars using nuclear reactors to power electric thrusters. Although fanciful, the concept was based upon engineering principles. By the early 1960s, NASA science programs examined the use of nuclear reactors to power electric propulsion systems to journey to the outer planes. This concept reemerged several times in later decades, but the high cost of developing a space nuclear reactor was always prohibitive. nuclear nuclear nuclear In the early-mid-1960s, nuclear reactors paired with electric propulsion systems were considered for deep space missions. A typical design placed the reactor far from the instruments and the propulsion system. It also required large radiators to dissipate heat. This remains the basic design even today. (credit: NASA) In 1965, the Air Force launched the SNAP-10A reactor into orbit. It operated for 43 days, producing 500 watts of power until the failure of a voltage regulator caused it to shut down. The SNAP-10A reactor was a small zirconium hydride (ZrH) thermal reactor fueled by uranium-235. To date, it is the only American nuclear reactor flown in space. nuclear SNAP-10A was the only nuclear reactor ever flown in space by the United States. It was operated for 43 days in 1964. (credit: NASA) nuclear The SNAP reactor programs were considered for various civil and military applications during the 1960s. A SNAP reactor could have replaced solar panels to provide longer-term power for an Earth-orbiting space station. Steady improvements in solar panel technology undercut most justifications for space reactors. (credit: US Air Force) Additional space nuclear reactor projects were studied throughout the 1960s. These included SNAP-2 and SNAP-8, as well as the SNAP-50/SPUR. They were much higher power compared to SNAP-10A. nuclear SNAP-8 was a space reactor development program in the 1960s. Although now mostly forgotten, it was an extensive test program. (credit: NASA) SNAP-8 was an extensive space reactor development program that included the construction of several test reactors at a NASA facility in Ohio. The primary application for SNAP-8 was for powering a human space station in low Earth orbit. Although substantial money and effort was spent on SNAP-8, it is mostly forgotten in space history books. nuclear nuclear The SNAP-8 nuclear reactor program was actively developed in the 1960s, with test reactors built and tested in Ohio. One possible use was powering an Earth-orbiting space station. Operating a reactor in space required careful consideration of operations so that astronauts were not exposed to the reactor radiation. (credit: NASA) SNAP-50/SPUR was a mid-1960s study of a more powerful reactor with an output of 300 kilowatts to 1 megawatt of electrical power. It was envisioned for launch on a Saturn IB and used to provide power for a variety of planetary missions, including Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn orbiters, as well as a solar probe. nuclear SNAP-50 was a space reactor program studied in the 1960s and considered for powering planetary missions. (credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech) Space nuclear reactors involve many different technology questions including the nuclear fuel, and the method for turning the heat into electrical energy. In addition, the systems have major safety requirements that affect the design. None of the SNAP reactor projects were pursued to flight hardware stage due high costs and the lack of a clear requirement. They were canceled by the late 1960s. nuclear The Lincoln Experimental Satellites 8 and 9 both used RTGs for power. They operated in very high orbits. It is rumored that one of these satellites was used to test stealthy technology to hide satellites. (credit: US Air Force) Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (1961–Present) Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) convert heat generated by the natural decay of radioisotope fuel (typically plutonium-238 in the United States) into electricity through thermoelectric coupling. Over nearly 80 years, the United States has spent many billions of dollars developing RTG technology and producing Pu-238. Maintaining the infrastructure to produce both the fuel and the RTGs has proven expensive. RTGs produce very low power, but they have no moving parts and are very reliable, often lasting for decades. nuclear A fuel pellet for an RTG. It is about the size of a marshmallow. Although RTGs have no moving parts, they represent sophisticated materials and manufacturing technology, and the plutonium fuel is expensive to produce. (credit: Dept. of Energy) The first two RTG demonstration systems were flown in 1961 (called SNAP-3B) and generated three watts of power. Later ones were flown on several earth-orbiting spacecraft, such as the Transit navigational satellite program. nuclear The SNAP-19 RTGs used on two Nimbus Earth observation satellites in the later 1960s were relatively small. (credit: NASA) nuclear Two SNAP-19 radioisotope thermoelectric generators were lost during a launch accident in 1968 and ended up in the Pacific Ocean. They were found and recovered. (credit: NASA) RTGs have also been used to power terrestrial devices, some classified and some unclassified. One of the more infamous examples was a small RTG, a SNAP-19C, used to power a signals intelligence collection device on top of a mountain in the Himalayas for spying on China. Although one appears to have been successfully installed, another of these RTGs was lost on the mountain in 1965, a story that was later reported by a mountain climber who had been involved in the operation. nuclear Plutonium-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generators have been used for terrestrial purposes. Here an RTG is used to power a top secret signals intelligence station on a mountaintop. (credit: New York Times) From the start, SNAP systems were planned for terrestrial, ocean, and space use, and came in a variety of types. A list of the types planned and used by the mid-1960s is below: Designation Use Power (watts) Isotope SNAP-3 Demonstration device 2.5 Polonium-210 SNAP-3A Satellite power 2.7 Plutonium-238 Undesignated Axel Heiberg weather station 5 Strontium-90 SNAP-7A Navigational buoy 10 Strontium-90 SNAP-7B Fixed navigational light 60 Strontium-90 SNAP-7C Weather station 10 Strontium-90 SNAP-7D Floating weather station 60 Strontium-90 SNAP-7E Ocean-bottom beacon 7.5 Strontium-90 SNAP-7F Offshore oil rig 60 Strontium-90 SNAP-9A Satellite power 25 Plutonium-238 SNAP-11 Moon probe 21-25 Curium-242 SNAP-13 Demonstration device 12 Curium-242 SNAP-15A Military use 0.001 Plutonium-238 SNAP-17 Communications satellite 25 Strontium-90 SNAP-19B Nimbus-B weather satellite 30 Plutonium-238 SNAP-21 Deep sea use 10 Strontium-90 SNAP-23 Terrestrial uses 60 Strontium-90 SNAP-27 Lunar landings 60 Plutonium-238 SNAP-29 Various missions 500 Polonium-210 RTGs were used on Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 to supply power to the Apollo lunar surface experiment packages (ALSEP). Several of those RTGs had relatively short lifetimes, although others lasted longer. The ALSEP stations on the Moon were shut down prior to their power running below useable levels, although they would not have lasted much longer. (The Apollo 13 RTG ended up at the bottom of the ocean.) nuclear Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean extracts the fuel element of a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) from storage on the lunar module on the Moon. The RTG was used to power the Apollo Surface Experiment Package (ALSEP). (credit: NASA) nuclear The SNAP-27 RTG used to power the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) for the Apollo 14 mission. NASA has long and successful experience with RTGs, but the technology has been expensive to develop and sustain. (credit: NASA) RTGs were also used to provide primary power to Viking 1 and 2 (SNAP-19, 85 watts total), Pioneer 10 and 11 (SNAP-19, 165 watts total), Voyager 1 and 2 (each RTG provided 157 watts), Galileo (300 watts total, along with 120 lightweight radioisotope heater units), Ulysses (same as Galileo), and Cassini (three RTGs delivering 888 watts, along with 117 lightweight radioisotope heater units). nuclear Containers for storing RTGs for transport at Cape Canaveral in 1976. (credit: NASA) nuclear Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) have powered many spacecraft since the early 1960s. Here the RTG for the Cassini spacecraft is prepared for integration with the spacecraft in the 1990s. (credit: NASA) Other than the two Voyager missions that are still operating nearly fifty years after launch, there are a few operational spacecraft using RTGs for power. An RTG powers the New Horizons mission that flew past Pluto in 2015 and is now traveling through the Kuiper Belt. The Curiosity and Perseverance rovers also use Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (MMRTGs) designed for planetary surface use, and the Dragonfly spacecraft that will be launched to Titan will also use an MMRTG. A spare MMRTG remains in storage and has recently been proposed to power a Moon rover. nuclear Voyager 2, still operating deep out in space, is powered by RTGs produced 50 years ago, demonstrating the value of the RTG technology. (credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech) nuclear The Curiosity rover has operated for nearly fourteen years on the surface of Mars powered by a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, or MMRTG. The MMRTG is the white object at the rear of the spacecraft. (credit: NASA) Despite the expenditure of considerable time, effort, and money to improve the efficiency of the power conversion of RTGs over many decades, very little progress has been made in those subjects since the early RTGs were developed. The technology is mature, and improvements have been incremental. Many other systems, including all Mars rovers, have used lightweight radioisotope heater units to maintain appropriate temperatures for system electronics. China has also used similar heater units supplied by Russia in several of their lunar landers. These systems have been successfully deployed in space: Power Source Spacecraft Mission Type Launch Date Status SNAP-3B7 Transit 4A Navigational 6-29-61 RPS operated for 15 years. SNAP-3B8 Transit 4B Navigational 11-15-61 RPS operated for 9 years. Satellite operated periodically after 1962 high altitude test. Last reported signal in 1971. SNAP-9A Transit 5-BN-1 Navigational 9-28-63 RPS operated as planned. Non-RPS electrical problems on satellite caused satellite to fall after 9 months. SNAP-9A Transit 5-BN-2 Navigational 12-5-63 RPS operated for over 6 years. Satellite lost ability to navigate after 1.5 years. SNAP-9A Transit 5-BN-3 Navigational 4-21-64 Mission was aborted because of launch vehicle failure. RPS burned up on re-entry as designed. SNAP-19B2 Nimbus-B-1 Meteorological 5-18-68 Mission was aborted because of range safety destruct. RPS heat sources recovered and recycled. SNAP-19B3 Nimbus III Meteorological 4-14-69 RPSs operated for over 2.5 years. RHU Apollo 11 Lunar Surface 7-14-69 Radioisotope heater units for seismic experimental package. Station was shut down 8-3-69. SNAP-27 Apollo 12 Lunar Surface 11-14-69 RPS operated for about 8 years until station was shut down. SNAP-27 Apollo 13 Lunar Surface 4-11-70 Mission aborted on the way to the Moon. RPS re-entered earth's atmosphere and landed in South Pacific Ocean. No radiation was released. SNAP-27 Apollo 14 Lunar Surface 1-31-71 RPS operated for over 6.5 years until station was shut down. SNAP-27 Apollo 15 Lunar Surface 7-26-71 RPS operated for over 6 years until station was shut down. SNAP-19 Pioneer 10 Planetary 3-2-72 Spacecraft successfully operated to Jupiter and is now beyond orbit of Pluto. SNAP-27 Apollo 16 Lunar Surface 4-16-72 RPS operated for about 5.5 years until station was shut down. RTG "Transit" (Triad-01-1x) Navigational 9-2-72 SNAP-27 Apollo 17 Lunar Surface 12-7-72 RPS operated for almost 5 years until station was shut down. SNAP-19 Pioneer 11 Planetary 4-5-73 Spacecraft successfully operated to Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond. SNAP-19 Viking 1 Mars Surface 8-20-75 RPSs operated for over 6 years until lander was shut down. SNAP-19 Viking 2 Mars Surface 9-9-75 RPSs operated for over 4 years until relay link was lost. MHW-RTG LES 8 Communications 3-14-76 MHW-RTG LES 9 Communications 3-14-76 MHW-RTG Voyager 2 Planetary 8-20-77 RPSs still operating. Spacecraft successfully operated to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and beyond. MHW-RTG Voyager 1 Planetary 9-5-77 RPSs still operating. Spacecraft successfully operated to Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond. GPHS-RTG and LWRHU Galileo Planetary 10-8-89 RPSs operated through 9-17-03, when the spacecraft completed its mission. GPHS-RTG Ulysses Planetary/Solar 10-6-90 Mission ended. LWRHU Mars Pathfinder Mars Surface 12-4-96 LWRHU provided essential heat to Sojourner electronics for 84 days GPHS-RTG and LWRHU Cassini Planetary 10-15-97 Mission ended. LWRHU Mars Exploration Rovers Mars Surface 6-25-03 and 7-5-03 LWRHU provided essential heat to electronics GPHS-RTG New Horizons Planetary 1-19-06 RPS still operating. MMRTG Curiosity and Perseverance Rovers Mars Surface 11-26-11 and 7-30-20 RPS still operating. MMRTG Dragonfly Planetary 2030 NOTE: An RPS is a generic name for a family of different technologies, including the RHU, RTG, MHW-RTG, etc. SNAP = Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power RPS = Radioisotope Power System RTG = Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator RHU = Radioisotope Heater Units MHW-RTG = Multi-Hundred-Watt RTG GPHS-RTG = General Purpose Heat Source RTG LWRHU = Lightweight Radioisotope Heater Units The MMRTG is not suitable for all space missions. Recently, L3Harris Technologies finalized the design of a next-generation nuclear-based power source for future NASA deep space missions. Known as the Next-Generation Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (Next Gen RTG), flight units could power NASA deep space probes starting in the early 2030s. nuclear The Next Generation RTG program has developed flight hardware to support deep space missions. (credit: L3Harris) Now that NASA has announced plans for a Moon base, RTGs may also be pressed into service to provide emergency power in some circumstances, as well as power deployed for long-duration instruments. At least one American company has begun work on an RTG powered by americium, an element that is easier and cheaper to produce than the plutonium-238 used in previous American RTGs. However, it has a much lower energy density, meaning that more of it must be carried to produce the same amount of power as RTGs powered by Pu-238. For deep space missions, this could have a deleterious effect on spacecraft design, because bigger RTGs will impact many other aspects of the spacecraft such as propulsion and stabilization, but it may be acceptable for lunar surface use. One other downside is that NASA equipment and procedures have been molded by decades of Pu-238 handling, and new equipment and procedures would be required for using a different isotope. nuclear The Tau Mission was a 1986 proposal for a mission to deep space. It required a nuclear reactor and electric propulsion systems that would have had to operate reliably for a very long time. (credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech) SP-100 (1983–1995) After the cancellation of SNAP-8 and SNAP-50, no space nuclear reactor programs were pursued by the United States during most of the 1970s. By 1981, a project known as the Space Power Advanced Reactor (SPAR) was underway to develop a space nuclear reactor producing 100 kilowatts of electrical power with a seven-year design life. This work was curtailed, but by 1983, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Defense, and Department of Energy began development of a 100-kilowatt-electric-class space nuclear reactor, called the SP-100. nuclear nuclear The SP-100 was a space nuclear reactor program studied in the 1980s. Possible users included NASA and the Department of Defense, but there was no clear requirement for it and the program was canceled. (credit: General Electric) The SP-100 was designed with a two-megawatt-thermal fast reactor unit and thermoelectric system delivering 100 kilowatts-electric for a seven-year design life. This reactor was intended to support a wide variety of military and civilian requirements, none of which emerged. One possible application included powering spacecraft as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative: the program never had a clear need for such a system, although one of the primary proposed uses was to harden an important satellite by replacing large and vulnerable solar panels with a much more compact reactor. Because of high costs, schedule delays, and changing national space mission priorities, the SP-100 program was suspended by the early 1990s and later canceled. Timber Wind (1987–1992) The Timber Wind space nuclear thermal propulsion program was initiated by the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization in November 1987. Timber Wind was a highly classified program to develop technology for a very-high-acceleration nuclear-powered rocket to launch missile interceptors into space. Similar to NERVA, a propellant would be pushed through a nuclear reactor and super-heated and expelled from a nozzle, but whereas NERVA was planned for in-space use, Timber Wind would have launched from the ground. In 1991, after its existence was leaked to the media, the project was transferred to the Air Force but terminated a year later. Some information on Timber Wind was declassified at that time. The exhaust would be highly radioactive, but the reasoning was that it would only be used during a nuclear attack where radioactive rocket exhaust would be preferable to mushroom clouds over American cities. Project Timber Wind was based on a particle bed reactor using tiny uranium carbide pellets as fuel. The pellets would be used to heat hydrogen propellant. The exhaust would be highly radioactive, but the reasoning was that it would only be used during a nuclear attack where radioactive rocket exhaust would be preferable to mushroom clouds over American cities. The project had selected preliminary designs but had not tested any prototype components before the program was cancelled. nuclear The Topaz-2 project was an early-mid-1990s program where the United States evaluated an advanced space nuclear reactor developed in the former Soviet Union. Unfueled reactors and test hardware were shipped to the United States and tested. They were eventually returned to Russia. (credit: Phillips Laboratory) Topaz-2 (1980s–1990s) The Soviet Union had a far more active space nuclear power program than the United States, although most of its focus was on in-space nuclear reactors rather than RTGs. The country launched dozens of nuclear reactors into space during the 1970s and 1980s where they were used to power radars to detect American ships at sea. The satellites were known as Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellites, or RORSATs. By the late 1980s, the Soviet Union had several separate space nuclear reactor programs under development. These were not all replacements for the RORSAT reactor. One of these projects, mistakenly labeled “Topaz-2” in the United States, was actually known as “Enisey.” This project was purchased by the United States’ Ballistic Missile Defense Organization in the early 1990s and known as Topaz-2. (To add to the confusion, two Soviet nuclear reactors known as Topaz were flown in orbit in the later 1980s, but were an entirely different design.) Six Topaz-2 reactors and supporting equipment were flown from Russia to the United States. Several of the reactors were extensively ground-tested by a joint team of US, British, French and Russian engineers. The reactors’ unique design allowed them to be tested without nuclear fuel, using heating units to simulate the fuel. Topaz utilized a thermionic design for directly converting heat energy into electricity without using a circulating heat transfer fluid or turbine. The ground test program in the United States was considered highly successful, but there was limited technology transfer from Russia to the United States. The United States initially retained several flight capable reactors, and some proposals were advanced to test fly one of the reactors in space, but the program was terminated without any flights. The hardware was later returned to Russia. The legacy of this unusual test program is worthy of future analysis. nuclear The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) program was an early 2000s project to send a large spacecraft to orbit Jupiter. It was extremely ambitious and had a price tag over $20 billion. (credit: NASA) Prometheus/Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) (2002-2005) Several other space nuclear power research programs were conducted during the 1980s and 1990s, although funding was always limited and there is little public information about them. The cost of the overall JIMO program (not including the Prometheus-1 flight test) was $21.5 billion, which would have made it by far the most expensive space science program ever pursued. Starting in late 2002, NASA began pursuing development of a large spacecraft that could orbit Jupiter and explore the moons Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. The mission was known as the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO). The technology development program was named Prometheus. Prometheus had the goal of developing a 200-kilowatt-electric reactor capable of operating for the ten-year lifetime of the spacecraft. As the program progressed throughout 2003 and 2004, NASA began considering a test flight known as Prometheus-1. Naval Nuclear Reactors was engaged for development of the reactor, and private contractors and JPL were involved in designing the Brayton power conversion system and the spacecraft. Despite the expenditure of $463 million, JIMO was far from entering full-scale development. The cost of the overall JIMO program (not including the Prometheus-1 flight test) was $21.5 billion, which would have made it by far the most expensive space science program ever pursued. It was canceled in early 2005 (see “Prometheus bound: The legacy of the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter,” The Space Review, February 23, 2026.) nuclear In 2018, a space reactor designated KRUSTY was tested on the ground in the United States. Despite success, the program was not pursued to a flight test stage. This has been a common story for many American space nuclear programs. (credit: Wikimedia Commons) Kilopower/KRUSTY (2015–) In the 2010s, NASA and the Department of Energy began development of a nuclear reactor for providing surface power for a lunar outpost. The reactor consisted of a solid core of uranium-235, regulated by a control rod. Passive sodium heat pipes transferred heat from the core and Stirling engines converted that heat into electricity. The project was known as Kilowatt Reactor Using Stirling Technology, or KRUSTY. From November 2017 to March 2018, NASA carried out tests of the reactor, culminating in a 28-hour test of a one-kilowatt-electric Kilopower reactor during which the reactor was turned on, brought up to and operated at full power, and then shut down. At that time, the goal was to conduct a flight test of the reactor. However, no flight test was funded. KRUSTY had progressed further than most other recent projects, but it still faced the problem that there was no clear, pressing demand for it, the kind of requirement that could lead to flight testing and deployment. In June 2022, NASA selected three teams for phase 1 studies of fission surface power systems, small nuclear reactors intended to support later phases of the Artemis lunar exploration campaign. The teams were led by Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse and IX, a joint venture of Intuitive Machines and X-Energy. The teams were to design a 40-kilowatt reactor weighing no more than six metric tons and could operate for 10 years. DRACO and JETSON (2023-2025) In early 2023, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced they were partnered on the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO), a nuclear-thermal rocket engine project. In July 2023, Lockheed Martin won a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop and demonstrate a nuclear-powered spacecraft. Lockheed was working with BWXT on the program, with BWXT providing the nuclear reactor for DRACO and providing its high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel. After the initial announcements, there were few updates on the program until May 2025, when NASA announced that it was zeroing its budget for DRACO. In July 2025, DARPA announced that it was canceling DRACO because decreasing launch costs no longer made it necessary. DARPA also indicated it had encountered “infrastructure barriers” associated with launching a nuclear reactor. nuclear JETSON is a more recent Lockheed Martin program to develop space reactor technologies. (credit: Lockheed Martin) In November 2023, Lockheed Martin was awarded a contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) for the Joint Emergent Technology Supplying On-Orbit Nuclear (JETSON). The contract was to mature high-power nuclear electric power and propulsion technologies and spacecraft design. That work did not lead to any flight hardware. New space nuclear reactor program (2025–) In July 2025, the acting NASA administrator ordered NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate to release a request for proposals (RFP) for a nuclear reactor system. The program seeks to develop a reactor capable of producing at least 100 kilowatts of electric power and weighing up to 15 tons. The program’s goal is to have the reactor ready for flight by the end of 2029. The reactor would operate in the lunar south polar region for at least 10 years. Other than the prolific and successful RTGs, the history of American space nuclear programs is primarily one of stunted efforts and cancellations, and every program, including the relatively simpler RTGs, have underestimated difficulty, translating into underestimation of development time, cost and effort. By early 2026, NASA indicated plans to develop both a Space Reactor-1 (SR-1) for in-space use, and a Lunar Reactor-1 (LR-1) for lunar use. Detailed plans and timelines have not yet been made public. However, the SR-1 was announced to have a power output of 20 kilowatts electric, a modest, but achievable goal. It would be part of the Skyfall mission to send small helicopters to Mars by 2028, a highly ambitious, and some would say unrealistic, goal. Although a nuclear reactor for surface use on the Moon would appear to be a more practical near-term goal for NASA, such a reactor would require a lander capable of putting it on the surface, an additional challenge compared to an in-space reactor. nuclear The Discovery One from 2001: A Space Odyssey, was nuclear-propelled. Early concepts of the spacecraft had large radiators to dissipate heat, but director Stanley Kubrick deleted them because he thought they looked too much like wings. (credit: MGM) Space nuclear power: chasing elusive atoms Science fiction novels and movies, like 2001: A Space Odyssey, depicted spacecraft powered by nuclear rockets. Nuclear reactors and nuclear rockets have always been viewed as a powerful and advanced method to explore space, but successful development of these systems has not been easy. Other than the prolific and successful RTGs, the history of American space nuclear programs is primarily one of stunted efforts and cancellations, and every program, including the relatively simpler RTGs, have underestimated difficulty, translating into underestimation of development time, cost and effort. There are several reasons for this. As Bhavya Lal and Roger M. Myers pointed out in a 2025 report, the three primary reasons for failure were lack of “mission pull,” technological overreach, and timeliness—most nuclear development projects took too long and did not survive changes in Congresses and administrations. Many of these projects exhibited two or more of these factors. NERVA was a rocket in search of a Mars mission that required it, and took so long to develop that political support evaporated. SP-100 was a space reactor in search of a spacecraft that needed it, and flush national security budgets of the early 1980s were diminished by late in the decade. JIMO/Prometheus was not a mission supported by the science community (it’s “mission pull” was the wishful thinking of a NASA administrator), and required development of a reactor more powerful than those studied before. Although it was canceled by a different NASA administrator a few years after inception, its price tag inevitably would have killed it. Because the technologies can do things beyond the capabilities of conventional systems like solar panels, space nuclear power and propulsion programs will certainly be pursued in the future. Hopefully to greater success. Sources Department of Defense Inspector General Audit Report, The Timber Wind Special Access Program, Report Number 93-033, December 16, 1992. James A. Dewar, To the End of the Solar System: The Story of the Nuclear Rocket, University Press of Kentucky, 2003. George Dyson, Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship, Owl Books, 2003. Steven Aftergood, “Background on Space Nuclear Power,” Science & Global Security, Vol. 1, Nos. 1-2 (1989), pp. 93-108. National Research Council, Assessment of the Topaz International Program, June 27, 1996. National Research Council, Thermionics Quo Vadis? An Assessment of the DTRA's Advanced Thermionics Research and Development Program, 2001. General Accounting Office, OSI-98-3R, TOPAZ II Space Nuclear Power Program: Management, Funding, and Contracting Problems. General Accounting Office, T-NSIAD-93-2, Space Nuclear Propulsion: History, Cost, and Status of Programs. General Accounting Office, T-NSIAD-92-15, The SP-100 Nuclear Reactor Program: Should It Be Continued? Jack F. Mondt, “SP-100 Space Reactor Power System for Lunar, Mars and Robotic Exploration,” 43rd Congress of the International Astronautical Federation, August 28-September 5, 1992, IAF 92-0563. Prometheus Project Final Report, NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, October 1, 2005. Bhavya Lal and Roger M. Myers “Weighing the Future: Strategic Options for US Space Nuclear Leadership,” INL/RPT-25-85616, Idaho National Laboratory, July 2025. “NASA, DARPA Will Test Nuclear Engine for Future Mars Missions,” Space News, January 24, 2023. Jeff Foust, “NASA plans for lunar fission power systems face fiscal challenges,” Space News, July 20, 2023. “Lockheed Martin Selected to Develop Nuclear-Powered Spacecraft,” Space News, July 26, 2023. “BWXT to Provide Nuclear Reactor Engine and Fuel for DARPA Space Project,” Space News, July 28, 2023. Sandra Erwin, “Space nuclear power poised for breakthroughs — if NASA and DoD stay committed,” Space News, April 8, 2025. Jeff Foust, “DARPA says decreasing launch costs, new analysis led it to cancel DRACO nuclear propulsion project,” Space News, July 2, 2025. Jeff Foust, “New study calls for rapid development of space nuclear power systems,” Space News, July 16, 2025. Jeff Foust, “Industry supports NASA plans to accelerate work on lunar nuclear reactors,” Space News, August 8, 2025. Jeff Foust, “NASA advances lunar nuclear plan with commercial focus,” Space News, September 2, 2025. Jeff Foust, “Antares raises $96 million for nuclear reactors on Earth and in space,” Space News, December 3, 2025. Jeff Foust, “NASA and DOE to collaborate on lunar nuclear reactor,” Space News, January 24, 2026. Jeff Foust, “NASA to test nuclear electric propulsion with 2028 mission to Mars,” Space News, March 26, 2026. Jeff Foust, “The budget proposal that overshadowed Artemis 2,” Space News, May 5, 2026 Jeff Foust, “Ignition relaunches Artemis plans,” Space News, May 5, 2026. Jeff Foust, “NASA working to streamline development of nuclear electric propulsion demo mission,” Space News, June 4, 2026. Dwayne Day can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net. Note: we are now moderating comments. 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The Iranian Use Of Space Operations During Epic Fury

Iran Iran’s Khayyam satellite, the countryÆs only high-resolution imaging satellite, took this image of the Vogtle nuclear power plant in US state of Georgia.[4] The Iranian use of space operations during Epic Fury by Matthew Mowthorpe, Markos Trichas, and Damian Terrill Monday, July 13, 2026 This article analyzes how Iran used access to both commercial satellite imagery and imagery likely provided by both China and Russia to target US facilities in the Gulf states with drones and missiles. The imagery highlighted in the article is unlikely to have been used by Iran, however, it is shown to demonstrate the effectives of the Iranian strikes against US facilities in the region. Iran used ground-based jammers to disrupt both GPS and satellite communications during the conflict. Iranian support cyber campaigns were also used to target both US and Gulf entities. The use of commercial imagery and imagery supplied by Russia and China to target US facilities in Gulf Commercial imagery for a considerable time has been of sufficient resolution to be of military use. The ability to control the sale and resale of commercial imagery during periods of political tensions is not new: for instance, the US has restricted US commercial imagery companies from selling high-resolution imagery of Israel. What is significant during Epic Fury was the use by the Iranian regime of commercial imagery to target US military facilities in the region.[1] While some of this imagery was bought by China and supplied to the Iranian regime, the extent to which Russia has supplied imagery is not entirely clear. Iran has used this supply of imagery to cue their missiles and UAS to inflict both a civilian and military cost to not only US forces in the region, but also against nations in the region. The US quickly sought to sanction several Chinese companies to stem the supply of commercial imagery.[2] The following companies were sanctioned under EO 13949: Meentropy Technology (Hangzhou), also known as MizarVision, a China-based geospatial imagery company which published US military activity during Epic Fury; Earth Eye (TEE) a China-based entity providing satellite imagery to Iran; and Chang Guang Satellite Technology, which collected satellite imagery of US and allied military facilities to support Iranian regime requests. Chang Guang has previously been sanctioned by the US for providing imagery to US designated Houthis to target the US military in 2023.[3] Iran has only one electro-optical satellite (EO), called Khayyam. This was bult and launched by Russia in 2022. It was previously assessed to have a resolution of one meter, however releases of its imagery indicates a capability of 0.7 meters. It is highly likely Iran used this same imagery to target US military facilities in the region. It is likely that Russia operates the Khayyam satellite on behalf of Russia and prior to Iran’s data reception satellites being destroyed, its imagery could have been downlinked direct to Iran. It is highly likely that Russia supplies Iran with imagery, having a well established relationship with Iran.[5] The Russian space companies VNIEEM and NPK Barl built the Khayyam satellite. Iran used space assets, be that commercially imagery obtained via China and/or imagery provided by China’s extensive fleet of EO satellites and Russia. These space assets were used to track the location where US/Israeli missiles were launched from, where they were projected to impact and their flight path.[6] It is highly likely Iran used this same imagery to target US military facilities in the region. Some estimates suggest Iran caused $800 million in damage during the first two weeks of the conflict.[7] Iran was able to have a critical effect on air defense and satcom assets tied to intelligence and command and control capabilities. Critical facilities such as Al-Udeid (Qatar), Camp Arifjan, and Ali Al Salem Air Base (Kuwait), and Prince Sultan Air Base (Saudi Arabia), were also targeted. An AN/TPY-2 radar system, which is used in elements of the THAAD missile defense system, were targets in the UAE and Jordan.[8] The image below of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet HQ in Bahrain shows the destruction of AN/GSC-52B satcom terminals that played significant role in high-capacity and near-real-time communications for the US military. On March 27, a US Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS was reported as damaged in an Iranian missile and drone attack on Prince Sultan Air Force Base, Saudi Arabia.[9] Multiple refueling aircraft were also reported to be damaged as a result of Iranian strikes.[10] Iran Satellite imagery shows an attack on a building at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia (Planet Labs)[11] Iran US Navy’s Fifth Fleet HQ in Manama, Bahrain (Planet Labs)[12] Iran Al Udeid Air Base Qatar. (Airbus DS)[13] Iran Camp Arifjan, Kuwait (Planet Labs)[14] Iran Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait (Airbus DS)[15] Iran Military installation outside of Al Ruwais in the UAE. Airbus DS, Planet Labs[16] The US is heavily reliant on integrated networks, satellite communications, and distributed bases, which require the maintenance of the flow of data and geospatial intelligence. By attacking these nodes, Iran could have a greater impact than the actual destruction. It is unclear the operational impact of these Iranian strikes had on the US integrated network or the resilience this network contains. Iranian electronic warfare and jamming during Epic Fury The Iranians have long used jamming devices–GPS jamming, satellite jamming and GPS spoofing—along with sophisticated cyber-attack capabilities, which was evidenced during Epic Fury.[17] Iran significantly expanded its use of non-kinetic warfare since the start of the conflict. Its focus was on targeting space-based systems such as GPS, AIS, and SpaceX’s Starlink to disrupt and deny the US reliance and use of such systems. This provided widespread denial of service to navigation, communications and increased information control to military and civilian operators.[18] A total of 1,100 vessels were affected near the Strait of Hormuz with GNSS disruptions between February 28 and April 30, leading to a loss of navigation signals and false positioning.[19] Iran significantly expanded its use of non-kinetic warfare since the start of the conflict. Its focus was on targeting space-based systems such as GPS, AIS, and SpaceX’s Starlink. Starlink’s LEO communications saw connectivity disrupted by up to 80% in the region during February 28 and April 30. Starlink was used by both the Iranian civil population and protestors, along with its use as a potential military communications relay. Iran is highly unlikely to have any space domain jammers and relies heavily on its ground-based electronic warfare (EW) infrastructure. Iran is likely to rely on Chinese-origin technologies to conduct jamming. It is highly likely that Iran has integrated Russian EW jammers such as the mobile Krasukha-4 jammer and the Murmansk BN long range communications disruptor.[20] Iran also reportedly developed the Cobra V8 Platform. [21] Iran Russia’s mobile satcom jammer Krasukha 4[22] Iranian-aligned groups launched denial-of-service attacks, website infringements, and data wiping operations against US targets and organizations across the Gulf countries.[23] These attacks culminated in the March 2026 Iranian hacker group Handala disrupting operations and exfiltrating large volumes of sensitive data from the Stryker Corporation, a major US medical technology firm. Endnotes Hudson Institute, The War Above the War: How Chinese Satellites Support Iran, 29 May 2026./li> US Department of State, Disrupting Iran’s Overseas Military Procurement Networks, 8 May 2026. US Department of State, 8 May 2025 Iran’s Khayyam Satellite Captures Images of US Nuclear Facility, 20 November 2025. An ex-official quoted in Theresa Hitchens, How US military space operators are likely aiding the fight in Iran. Breaking Defence, 13 March 2026. Charles Galbreath, Director and Senior Resident Fellow for Spacepower Studies, The Mitchel Institute Spacepower Advantage Center of Excellence, Operation Epic Fury: Key Insights and Analysis, 7 March 2026. Qurat Ul-Ain Shabbir, Spatial Data has become a weapon of war in the US-Iran war. Space News, 29 May 2026. Qurat Ul-Ain Shabbir, Spatial Data has become a weapon of war in the US-Iran war. Space News, 29 May 2026. Chris Gordon and Stephen Losey, Key E-3 AWACS Damaged in Iranian Attack on Saudi Air Base, Air & Space Forces Magazine, 28 March 2026. Chris Gordon, US Forces at Saudi Air Base Suffer Iranian Attack, Air & Space Forces Magazine, 27 March 2026. Iran Strikes US Military Infrastructure in Middle East, 3 March 2026, New York Times. Iran Strikes US Military Infrastructure in Middle East, 3 March 2026, New York Times. Iran Strikes US Military Infrastructure in Middle East, 3 March 2026, New York Times. Iran Strikes US Military Infrastructure in Middle East, 3 March 2026, New York Times. Iran Strikes US Military Infrastructure in Middle East, 3 March 2026, New York Times. Iran Strikes US Military Infrastructure in Middle East, 3 March 2026, New York Times. Kari Bingen, Epic Fury: The Campaign Against Iran’s Missile and Nuclear Infrastructure. Center for Strategic & International Studies, 5 March 2026. Larissa Beavers, Iran Non-Kinetic Jamming since February 2026, ISR University Integrity Flash, 30 April 2026. Larissa Beavers, ISR University Integrity Flash, 30 April 2026 See Matthew Mowthorpe, The Russian Space Threat and a Defense against it with Guardian Satellites, The Space Review, 13 June 2022, for further details on Russia’s EW capabilities Larissa Beavers, ISR University Integrity Flash, 30 April 2026 Krashukha-4 is an electronic warfare system developed by Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies for the Russian armed forces and likely used by Iran. Soumya Awasthi, Signals Before Strikes: Electronic Warfare in the Iran War, Observer Research Foundation, 24 May 2026. Dr. Matthew Mowthorpe is the BAE Account Manager for UK Space Control. Professor Markos Trichas is Professor in Practice, Astrophysics, University of Oxford and Director National Security and Defence Space in BAE. Dr. Damian Terrill is the BAE Account Manager for UK National Armaments Group.

Inspiration From The Moon

space mirrors An artist’s concept of three solar sails, each designed to reflect different colors of light, seen in the vicinity of the Moon. The whole world looking up: inspiration from the Moon by Richard T. Logue Monday, July 13, 2026 Picture a clear evening, the kind where the Moon hangs large and low and people drift outside just to look at it. Then, a few degrees off the Moon's edge, three points of light kindle in a row—one red, one white, one blue—each sharper and brighter than any star in the sky. They do not streak, or twinkle, or fall; they simply hold, steady and unblinking, and the crowd makes the sound crowds make at fireworks. Across a band of the planet thousands of kilometers wide, millions of strangers are looking at the same patch of sky at the same instant, sharing the same involuntary thought: what is that? That sounds like a daydream. It is closer to an engineering spec—and humanity is, right now, learning to write on the sky. A venture called Reflect Orbital has raised real money to put mirrors in low Earth orbit and sell reflected sunlight on demand; its first demonstrator is set to fly this year after securing FCC approval last week, with a constellation of thousands proposed to follow. Which leaves the question engineers are least practiced at answering: not whether such a light can be built—every piece of it already has flight heritage—but whether it should be. A light on purpose That last question is the one worth dwelling on, and it is older than any rocket: what is a light in the sky actually for? In an age that struggles to agree on what is even real, what is it worth to have something at the distance of the Moon that anyone can confirm with their own eyes? Begin with the oldest answer: wonder. What does it do to people to look up together? A total eclipse rearranges the people standing under it: they weep, they cheer, strangers who will never meet again embrace. Psychologists who study awe find it leaves measurable traces such as more generosity, a diminished sense of self, a wider circle of concern. An eclipse delivers all of that by accident of orbital geometry, for two minutes, wherever the shadow happens to cross. What would it mean to deliver it on purpose, on a night chosen in advance, aimed at a chosen part of the world? Apollo 8 did not change how the species saw itself with an equation; it did it with a single photograph of Earth rising over the lunar limb. If one photograph could do that, what might a few hundred million people looking up at the same sky, in the same moment, do? And whose moment would it be? Not a nation’s. A thing like this would belong to no one and to everyone at once: a shared human event crossing borders in a single instant, the rarest kind of common ground. Need the colors stand for anything in particular? Only what the world chooses to read into them; the same three reflectors could fly any palette, for any occasion that belongs to all of us. What matters is not whose colors hang beside the Moon, but that everyone beneath that stretch of sky sees them at the same time. There is a quieter question underneath. In an age that struggles to agree on what is even real, what is it worth to have something at the distance of the Moon that anyone can confirm with their own eyes: no telescope, no press release, no trust in any institution required? One would not have to believe that people can build and operate in cislunar space. One would simply look up and watch them do it. That is the case for wanting it. The surprise is how modest the how turns out to be. The surprising part is the physics Intuition says anything visible across the Moon's distance must be colossal. It is not, and the reason is the single most counterintuitive fact in the whole idea: a flat mirror does not throw a floodlight, but instead reflects an image of the Sun. Sunlight striking a smooth mirror leaves as a narrow cone only about half a degree wide, the angular size of the Sun itself. Every photon the mirror collects is funneled into that thin cone instead of being scattered across the sky. Relative to a dull, diffuse surface, a mirror concentrates its light by a factor of roughly one hundred thousand. That concentration is the entire trick: it lets a small, light mirror outshine everything else overhead. The effect has been seen for years, by accident. The old Iridium communications satellites carried flat antenna panels that occasionally caught the Sun and hurled a reflection groundward: the celebrated "Iridium flares," bright enough to cast shadows and brief enough to miss in a blink. Those came from panels a couple of meters across, in low Earth orbit. Move the mirror out to lunar distance and brightness is lost to the inverse-square law; enlarge it from a couple of meters to a few tens of meters and the arithmetic returns to the observer's favor. A reflector roughly 20 to 35 meters across—a disc of metallized film that would drape a soccer field—shines at lunar distance at the brightness of Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Because the outgoing cone is fixed by the Sun’s width, the patch of Earth that can see it at any instant spans about 3,575 kilometers, or roughly from Houston to New York, about a quarter of the planet’s diameter. This is not a backyard light; it is continental. space mirrors Figure 1. Naked-eye brightness vs. reflector diameter at lunar distance, against familiar stars. A 20–35 m film shines near Sirius — well above the naked-eye limit. space mirrors Figure 2. The beam's footprint at Earth — about 3,575 km, a quarter of Earth's diameter. Anyone inside it sees the light at full brightness. Earth's rotation (~0.46 km/s at the equator) carries an observer across the disk in up to 3,575 ÷ 0.46 ≈ 7,700 s — about two hours for a central pass. Color is the one place nature charges a toll. Sunlight is white, a broad mix of every wavelength, so to make one reflector shine red and another blue requires coating them with optical filters that pass only a slice of the spectrum. That discards most of the light, which is why the colored reflectors must be larger than the white one to match its brightness. But the penalty is a tax, not a wall: the colored discs grow to a few tens of meters, not hundreds, and three of them—red, white, blue—can shine together as a tricolor visible to the unaided eye even against a moonlit sky. None of this requires inventing anything. The Soviet space program flew the crude version in 1993, when the Znamya experiment unfurled a 20-meter aluminized sheet from a cargo ship and swept a moving spot of reflected sunlight across nighttime Europe. What that era lacked was not the physics but everything around it: the photometry to predict brightness and color, the orbit, and a spacecraft built to do it deliberately rather than as a stunt. space mirrors Figure 3. Where the colors come from. The Sun's spectrum is sliced by filters into a red and a blue channel; the white reflector stays broadband. Selecting color discards most of the light — the "color tax." space mirrors Figure 4. Mission geometry. Reflectors in a halo orbit around the Moon aim toward Earth's night side; near apolune they linger for days, far from lunar glare, for long viewing windows. Timing turns out to be generous rather than fussy. The reflectors would ride a near-rectilinear halo orbit—the same 6.5-day path CAPSTONE has flown around the Moon—which carries them far from the lunar disk for most of each revolution and lets them linger there, near the orbit's high point, for days at a stretch. That is precisely where the sky is darkest and the geometry kindest, so the display windows are long and predictable rather than fleeting. How long the lights hang there is a choice, not a constraint, and it can be generous. Because the reflectors hover almost motionless near the orbit's high point, the Earth's own rotation sets the speed at which any observer is carried across the illuminated disk, and that speed is slow, so a fixed reflector can keep a color lit over a given place for up to a couple of hours, the same for all three, since color does not change the beam’s spread. So this need not be a fleeting flash. The three lights could hang beside the Moon for much of an evening: the red, white, and blue holding steady while the turning Earth carries a broad band of its surface, in sequence, through the beam, so that hundreds of millions of people could step outside on their own time and still find the same three lights waiting. And the length of the show is set deliberately, not by chance: the flotilla shines only until a scheduled handover, when the same craft are converted, on cue, into the solar-sail experiment that is their second act, so how long the lights stay visible is fixed in advance by the date chosen for that conversion. The natural night to stage a public event is around a quarter-to-gibbous Moon:bright enough to anchor the eye, dark enough to let the colors read. space mirrors Figure 5. The whole flotilla, stowed, against Starship’s payload bay. Three satellites — ~22, ~29, and ~34 kg — total roughly 85 kg and half a cubic meter: under 0.05% of the bay. (Illustration; not to exact scale.) It fits in a corner of the rocket Here is where most “giant space mirror” schemes collapse, and where this one does not. The reflectors are not glass. They are films of aluminized polymer about a tenth the thickness of a human hair, weighing some three and a half grams per square meter, or lighter than a grocery bag spread over the same area. They deploy the way a figure skater spins: the satellite spins up and centrifugal force flings the film outward into a taut, flat disc, with no rigid booms required. NASA’s ACS3 mission folded an 80-square-meter solar sail into a box the size of a microwave oven and flew it in 2024; Japan’s IKAROS deployed a 196-square-meter membrane by spin in deep space in 2010. The hard part has flight heritage. space mirrors Figure 6. The deployment sequence: a large reflector fully unfurled by spin, a second opening, a third just beginning — gossamer films pulled flat by rotation alone, the Moon beyond. What rides to orbit, though, is not the sail but the satellite. Each reflector is a real spacecraft: a compact bus with thrusters to spin up and deploy the film, attitude control fine enough to hold the beam on target, power, communications, and propellant to steer itself onto a departure trajectory once the show is over. Sized against flown deep-space small satellites—NASA's 14-kilogram NEA Scout, itself a solar sail, and the 25-kilogram CAPSTONE that has been flying the exact lunar orbit this mission would use—each reflector satellite works out to roughly 22 to 34 kilograms fully fueled, carrying a conservative propellant reserve and a 30 percent mass margin. Three of them, with a dispenser, total under one hundred kilograms. Three sails of different sizes, flying together, would be the first in-space test of propellantless formation flying. The propulsion demands are gentler than they sound. The big maneuver, insertion into lunar orbit, is supplied by the launch vehicle, not the satellites. Maintaining a near-rectilinear halo orbit costs only a few meters per second of velocity change per year; departing it for disposal costs a few tens of meters per second more. The sail itself can perform much of that departure with no propellant at all—which is precisely the maneuver the technology demonstration exists to prove. The onboard thrusters are there to spin the film open, aim it, and guarantee a clean exit. The comparison that makes the point: SpaceX's Starship carries a payload bay roughly eight meters across and 18 meters tall. The entire tricolor flotilla occupies around half a cubic meter and 85 kilograms: a rounding error against a vehicle that lifts a hundred tons. The hardware for a light a quarter of the planet could watch would ride to the Moon as an afterthought, tucked in a corner with room for thousands more. This is not a flagship with a flagship-sized budget. It is a rideshare payload. More than a light There is a fair objection to all this: isn’t it just an expensive stunt? It would be if the lights were all it produced. But the same gossamer films that make the light are, judged as solar sails, exceptional by the measure that counts, sail area per kilogram of spacecraft. Even fully fueled, the largest reflector carries close to 30 square meters of sail per kilogram, roughly double the highest ratio any sail has flown. This turns the flotilla into a serious experiment the moment the show is over. space mirrors Figure 7. Sail areas drawn to scale, from Znamya-2 — the first spin-deployed space mirror (1993) — through the membranes flown by JAXA and NASA, to the proposed reflectors at 314–962 m², which would be the largest yet flown and the highest in area-to-mass. Three sails of different sizes, flying together, would be the first in-space test of propellantless formation flying: spacecraft holding and shifting their formation on sunlight alone, spending no fuel, a capability long studied on paper and never demonstrated. They would return the first measurements of solar radiation pressure in cislunar space, a regime no sail has sampled, with the red and blue channels even revealing how that faint push changes with the color of the light. And when they are done, they dispose of themselves, tilting to the Sun to steer toward reentry or escape, leaving no debris behind. That dual purpose is also what makes the economics defensible: stripped of the spectacle, this is still a rideshare-class solar-sail demonstration worth flying on its own merits. So, the public event comes, in effect, as a dividend on an experiment the field already wants to run. The objection that deserves a real answer None of which dismisses the astronomers. The night sky is a commons, and humanity has spent the past century brightening it: first from the ground, where light pollution has erased the Milky Way for most of the world’s population, and now from orbit, as the number of satellites climbs into the tens of thousands. They have watched the sky fill with uninvited light, and they are entitled to ask why theirs should be the commons everyone else gets to scribble on. Who, if anyone, gets to put bright things above our heads is no longer a hypothetical question. The honest answer is not, “This is harmless.” It is that this is the opposite kind of thing from what they are fighting. A display whose whole purpose is to be seen has every reason to be seen considerately and every means to do it. The fair core of that worry is about permanence: a sky filling, steadily and irreversibly, with light that no one can switch off. A specular reflector is a different kind of object entirely. Off its narrow beam it is essentially invisible; a flat mirror seen edge-on returns nothing at all. It brightens a single beam-width of sky, on a published schedule, across one or several announced nights, and it can be turned off in an instant by tilting the film so the reflection slips past Earth. It is temporary, predictable, and steerable. The guidance that urges spacecraft to stay fainter than the naked-eye limit was written for permanent populations meant to fly for decades, not for a single scheduled event by three craft that then depart. The asymmetry is one of kind, not degree. A permanent fixture in the sky is there every night, for every observatory, for as long as it flies. A three-reflector display would brighten a single beam-width of sky for the hours of one or several scheduled nights, on dates observatories would know weeks in advance—and then nothing, ever again. Outside the swept band the sky is untouched; inside it, a telescope loses part of a few long-announced evenings, and no more. One is a standing condition; the other is a single visit that ends. Done thoughtfully, such an event would cost observatories almost nothing: announce the nights far in advance, publish the beam geometry so any telescope can plan around the hours it crosses their sky, confine the whole event to a few scheduled evenings, and bring the astronomical community in before anything flies. A display whose whole purpose is to be seen has every reason to be seen considerately and every means to do it. The light we choose Almost everything humanity has lifted into the sky, it lifted for a reason of use: to navigate, to broadcast, to sell, to defend. The rarest thing would be to put something up there for no reason at all except that it would move us. The pieces are in hand. The films are gossamer and already flight-proven; the rocket has room to spare; the physics has held since a Russian mirror threw sunlight across nighttime Europe 30 years ago. What is missing is only the decision to do something beautiful on purpose—and to aim it not at a market or a flag, but at everyone. Picture the night it finally happens. Across a continent, conversations stop mid-sentence. Strangers point. A child asks what it is, and for once the grownups don’t quite have an answer, only three colored lights burning beside the Moon, and the dawning understanding that we put them there. For an evening a quarter of the world is looking at the same sky, together, and feeling the same small lift. That is the whole idea: not to light the heavens, but to give the whole world a reason to look up at once—and to remember, looking, what we are capable of when we reach for wonder on purpose. Richard T. Logue is a Houston physician and independent researcher with a deep love of space and cosmology. His recent peer-reviewed work — “Looped Spacetime Cosmology,” Frontiers in Physics — examines a new approach to the shape of the universe. Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitted comments will be posted.

The Mystery Of Mission Zero

PHSF The Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHSF) at the Kennedy Space Center. (credit: NASA) The mystery of Mission Zero by James Behling Monday, July 13, 2026 When walking down the main corridor of the south end of the Multi-Operations Support Building (MOSB) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), there are photos of the missions that the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHSF) and MOSB have supported over the years. They are in chronological order, going down one wall and back up the other. All the missions supported are represented with photos except one: the very first one. PHSF Layout of the PHSF. (credit: NASA) The origins of the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility The PHSF is a payload processing facility in the KSC industrial area. It started out as the Cargo Hazardous Servicing Facility (CHSF) and was conceived in the early 1980s to address the need for a hazardous processing facility for large shuttle class payloads.[1] A hazardous processing facility supports operations such as loading high-pressure gases and hypergolic propellants, as well as work involving solid rocket motors. Despite being designed to support shuttle-class payloads, the facility ultimately supported only five Space Shuttle missions. The existing Delta Spin Test Facility, Explosive Safe Area-60, and Spacecraft Assembly and Encapsulation Facility-2 (SAEDF-2) were limited to Delta-, Atlas-, and Titan-class payloads. The need for the facility was identified as early as 1982 and initial funding was provided in 1983. The design was complete in 1984 and construction finished in 1987.[2] The name was changed to PHSF during the Challenger stand down. The PHSF is a complex of five buildings: the PHSF itself; the MOSB, a building with office space and control rooms for the project using the PHSF; and three buildings for storing transporters, propellants, and krypton gas. The PHSF proper is a large building measuring 210 x 98 x 112 feet (64 x 30 x 34.1 meters).[3] It is dominated by a high bay and main airlock. PHSF DSP Shipping Container. (credit: NASA) Missions supported The first documented mission supported by the PHSF was the Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite (CRRES) in 1990. Despite being designed to support shuttle-class payloads, the facility ultimately supported only five Space Shuttle missions: Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO), Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS), Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS), and Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Missions 1 and 2 (HST SM-1 and HST SM-2). The opening of the Space Station Processing Facility in the mid-1990s, along with a decline in shuttle hazardous payloads, contributed significantly to this outcome. Instead, the PHSF became a key facility for planetary missions launched on expendable launch vehicles, beginning with Mars Observer. Notable programs included Cassini, the Mars Exploration Rover (MER), Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), and Mars 2020 missions, as well as Pluto New Horizons and Europa Clipper. A complete list of supported missions is provided at the end of the article. PHSF DSP Vertical Transport Container. (credit: USAF) Mission Zero When construction of the PHSF was completed, NASA and the USAF were finalizing their shuttle return-to-flight plans and launch manifests. Three DOD shuttle missions—STS-27, STS-28, and STS-33—were planned for 1988 and 1989. During the same period, the first Titan IV launch was to launch, with the Defense Support Program (DSP)-14 as its payload. DSP-14 was the first of a new version of missile warning spacecraft and had originally been designed to fly on the Space Shuttle. After the Challenger accident, all DSP spacecraft were transferred to expendable launch vehicles (Titan IV & Delta IV) except DSP-16, which flew on STS-44. By the standards of the time, DSP was a large spacecraft, measuring 28 by 13.7 feet (8.5 by 4.2 meters), and it was shipped horizontally in a large shipping container aboard a C-5 aircraft.[4] The shipping container did not allow the spacecraft to be lifted directly onto the Titan IV. As a result, DSP-14 had to be rotated into a vertical position and transferred to another transport container better suited for pad lifting operations. This work needed to take place in a clean room to prevent spacecraft contamination. PHSF DSP spacecraft rotating to vertical on shipping container base. (credit: USAF) The only USAF facility large enough to accommodate DSP-14 and its containers was the Spacecraft Processing and Integration Facility (SPIF), but it was already committed to supporting the three DOD shuttle payloads. NASA facilities that could support the work were SAEF-2, the Vertical Processing Facility (VPF), and the PHSF. SAEF-2 was to be occupied with the Magellan and Galileo planetary spacecraft, which were scheduled to launch during the same period. The VPF was supporting two Tracking and Data Relay Satellite missions and the upper stages for the two planetary missions.[5] With all this payload preparation work going on at the Cape in the late 1980s, the PHSF was the only facility available, and it was just coming online. The USAF provided funding to help ensure the facility completion and to add security measures, such as internal shades to cover external and internal windows of the high bay and airlock. The actual spacecraft container transfer operation occurred in the spring of 1989.[6] Since payload identities on Titan IV launches were initially classified, DSP operations at the PHSF were classified and not documented in any open literature. Now, DSP launches on Titan IV have been long declassified. PHSF Missions Date Mission Launch Vehicle 6/14/89 DSP-14 Titan IV 7/25/90 CRRES Atlas I 4/5/91 GRO STS-37 9/12/91 UARS STS-48 9/25/92 MO Titan III 9/12/93 ACTS STS-51 12/2/93 HST SM-1 STS-61 11/1/94 Wind Delta II 11/7/96 MGS Delta II 2/11/97 HST SM-2 STS-82 10/15/97 Cassini Titan-IVB 10/24/98 Deep Space 1 Delta II 2/7/99 Stardust Delta II 8/8/01 Genesis Delta II 6/10/03 MER-A Delta II 7/7/03 MER-B Delta II 8/12/05 MRO Atlas V 1/19/06 PNH Atlas V 8/4/07 Phoenix Delta II 11/26/11 MSL Atlas V 11/18/13 MAVEN Atlas V 12/3/14 EFT-1 Delta IV Heavy 12/6/15 OA-4 Atlas V 3/23/16 OA-6 Atlas V 9/8/16 OSIRIS-REX Atlas V 3/19/17 OA-7 Atlas V 4/18/18 TESS Falcon 9 7/20/20 Mars 2020 Atlas V 10/13/23 PSYCHE Falcon Heavy 10/14/24 EUROPA CLIPPER Falcon Heavy 8/30/26* RST Falcon Heavy *Planned References Schuiling, Roelof L. "Launch Site Payload Ground Support Factors in Space Shuttle Launch Operations." AIAA Paper 88-4730, presented at the AIAA Space Programs and Technologies Conference, Huntsville, Alabama, September 27–29, 1988. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1988, 87 National Aeronautics and Space Administration, John F. Kennedy Space Center, Space Transportation System Cargo Projects: Milestones, Schedules and Status Summary, K-CM-03.2 (Kennedy Space Center, FL: NASA John F. Kennedy Space Center, March 15, 1982), 5-2 National Aeronautics and Space Administration, John F. Kennedy Space Center, Cargo Hazardous Servicing Facility, Phase I, Specification No. 79K27025, Rev. D (Kennedy Space Center, FL: NASA John F. Kennedy Space Center) United States Space Force, "Defense Support Program Satellites," Fact Sheets, updated October 2020, accessed July 6, 2026. Roelof L. Schuiling, "Space Shuttle Planetary Payload Launch Site Operations," Paper AIAA-90-0517, presented at the 28th Aerospace Sciences Meeting, Reno, Nevada, January 8–11, 1990 (Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1990), 1 James Behling, personal observations while assigned to the 6555th Aerospace Test Group, Cape Canaveral AFS, FL, Spring 1989. James Behling is a 40-year retired veteran of military, commercial, and civil space programs. He is currently docent and researcher for the Cape Canaveral Space Force Space Museum and a volunteer at the American Space Museum.