It seems as though $5.6 billion wasn't enough. That was the news from the US Space Force on Friday, when military officials announced they were tripling the maximum value of one of the service's National Security Space Launch contracts to $17 billion.

The expansion of the Space Force's National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 contract comes as the Pentagon signals rising demand for military satellite launches. The NSSL program is set up to allow Space Systems Command, which oversees the Space Force's launch program, to select from a pool of launch providers for individual missions to deliver the military's satellites to orbit.

The NSSL program has two parts. Lane 1 covers the Space Force's more risk-tolerant missions, such as medium-lift launches with experimental payloads or rideshare missions carrying satellites for the Pentagon's surveillance or data relay constellations. Lane 2 includes higher-priority strategic missions, like the government's largest and most expensive spy satellites, or radiation-hardened communications satellites designed to survive a nuclear war.

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It seems as though $5.6 billion wasn't enough. That was the news from the US Space Force on Friday, when military officials announced they were tripling the maximum value of one of the service's National Security Space Launch contracts to $17 billion.

The expansion of the Space Force's National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 contract comes as the Pentagon signals rising demand for military satellite launches. The NSSL program is set up to allow Space Systems Command, which oversees the Space Force's launch program, to select from a pool of launch providers for individual missions to deliver the military's satellites to orbit.

The NSSL program has two parts. Lane 1 covers the Space Force's more risk-tolerant missions, such as medium-lift launches with experimental payloads or rideshare missions carrying satellites for the Pentagon's surveillance or data relay constellations. Lane 2 includes higher-priority strategic missions, like the government's largest and most expensive spy satellites, or radiation-hardened communications satellites designed to survive a nuclear war.

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The Space Development Agency was established in 2019 to help speed up the deployment of US military space systems by sidestepping the Pentagon's traditional sluggish bureaucracy.

Seven years later, SDA is finally launching its first batches of operational satellites, just as the Pentagon plans to shutter the semi-autonomous agency and fold it back into the Space Force's procurement pipeline, newly reorganized under several program acquisition executives in a bid to streamline weapons buying.

SDA's fate is not a surprise, and lawmakers in both houses of Congress have backed the agency's closure in drafts of this year's National Defense Authorization Act.

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One week ago, three widely respected European news outlets published the results of an investigation into what they described as a "joint plan" by China and Russia to "defeat Elon Musk's Starlink."

The story was the product of a long-running inquiry by The Insider, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde. Reporters at those publications said they reviewed a cache of documents detailing growing military cooperation between China and Russia. The documents covered discussions between the nuclear powers on integrated air and missile defense systems, autonomous "swarm" loitering munitions, next-generation armored vehicles, and military aviation, the report said.

According to the papers, the investigation found evidence of a partnership between China and Russia in the field of space weapons far deeper than either country has acknowledged. One particular focus for China and Russia has been developing strategies to counter SpaceX's Starlink satellite broadband network.

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