Recently, a company announced a contract with the United States Department of Defense. The goal? Develop a station or rather an autonomous space outpost that could be put into orbit in 2022.
In a context of spatial tensions with China and Russia, the United States is about to be at the origin of a new turning point. In a press release published by Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) on July 14, 2020, there is talk of a contract signed with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU). Remember that the DIU is a division of the United States Department of Defense, so the objective is to help the army to use technologies more quickly emerging business.
According to the press release, the contract stipulates a reuse of the SNC Shooting Star transport vehicle. The Shooting Star was originally planned to supply the International Space Station (ISS). Nevertheless, the vehicle will ultimately serve as the design basis for an unmanned orbital outpost .
SNC evokes a scalable and autonomous space station for logistics experiments and demonstrations. More specifically, it is about space assembly, experimentation, logistics, manufacturing, training, test and evaluation missions. There will also be missions involving microgravity. Let us mention in passing that the purpose of space assembly is to put satellites into orbit directly from space.
According to an article by The Dive, the station could also be used to test communication systems . However, it could also be about data sharing or navigation systems. A little more worrying all the same, the station would also be able to accommodate sensors for intelligence, surveillance or reconnaissance purposes. It is also not impossible that the machine is equipped with defensive or offensive weapons.
SNC brings up the possibility of placing the station in different orbits . These include medium Earth orbit, highly elliptical orbit, and geosynchronous Earth orbits (GEO). In addition, it should be noted that the Pentagon has not yet reacted to this press release, so that doubt still hangs. However, it is difficult to believe in fake news. Indeed, the Sierra Nevada Corporation is a long-time supplier from the US Army, NASA and the space industry.
In June 2020, the Pentagon made a startling announcement. This concerns another field where a technological war is taking place:artificial intelligence. His project is to have two fighter planes fight , the first piloted by a human and the second totally autonomous managed by an AI.
