Pentagon, NASA Remove Barriers Impeding Joint Space Projects

Driving the changes are actions by Moscow and Beijing to challenge American space interests with antisatellite weapons, jamming capabilities and other potentially hostile technology. Those secretive systems, often operated by specially trained forces focused on space dominance, threaten both U.S. military and private assets in orbit, according to a series of reports from the Pentagon, the White House National Space Council and industry study groups. As a result, the Pentagon is intent on tapping civilian expertise and programs to help gain an edge in this emerging warfighting domain.

The Space Force is at the center of the action. Gen. John Raymond, the fledgling military branch’s chief of operations, recently unveiled a research partnership with NASA aimed at shielding satellites from lasers or cyberattacks. Eventually, according to government and industry officials briefed on the matter, civil-military cooperation is expected to extend to defending planned NASA bases on the lunar surface, as well as protecting U.S. commercial operations envisioned to extract water or minerals there.

Large and small contractors are maneuvering to take advantage of opportunities to merge military and nonmilitary technologies. They include established military suppliers that already have a foot in both camps, such as Northrop Grumman Corp. NOC 2.44% , the Dynetics unit of Leidos Holdings Inc. LDOS -1.43% and Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Smaller companies such as Maxar Technologies Holdings Inc., closely held robotic-lander maker Astrobotic Technology Inc. and small-satellite producer Blue Canyon Technologies, recently acquired by Raytheon Technologies Corp. RTX 0.67% , also seek to diversify in the same way.

Building on initial NASA and military technology, Northrop Grumman has demonstrated the commercial utility of attaching a new propulsion system to an aging satellite with depleted fuel reserves, as a way to keep that spacecraft in orbit beyond its intended lifespan. “We’re very excited about where that’s going to go” in terms of government acceptance of in-orbit refueling and assembly options, said Tom Wilson, Northrop’s vice president of strategic space systems.

“We’re having a lot of conversations,” he said, “with the Defense Department, the national-security community and NASA.”

The most dramatic evidence of shifting U.S. policy is “watching the barriers crumble between civil, military and commercial space in terms of an integrated strategy for our country,” Pam Melroy, an ex-astronaut and former Pentagon and industry official, told a think-tank conference in January.

“Things are transitioning from ideas to actual programs,” said Joel Sercel, a space entrepreneur who earlier worked for the Pentagon and NASA.

Industry and government officials said they expect the trend to accelerate under President Biden, primarily because lawmakers and the military appear strongly behind such an integrated approach in a contested military arena.

“We now have those potential adversaries looking to deny our use of space” for military and commercial purposes, Gen. David Thompson, the Pentagon’s vice chief of space operations, said during an industry conference last year.

When President Dwight Eisenhower created NASA as an independent agency in 1958, he bucked strong military and congressional pressure to make it part of the Pentagon, said historian Susan Eisenhower, who has written books on her grandfather’s leadership style. Instead, he “wanted a firewall between them” to allow countries to share the science, she said in a talk late last year.

For more than six decades, the U.S. government followed that principle despite moves by Beijing and Moscow to meld military and civilian endeavors. The U.S. astronaut corps always has included many military officers, some previous NASA scientists quietly shared data with military counterparts and NASA’s now-retired Space Shuttle fleet was supposed to launch Pentagon satellites. But today, veteran industry and government experts describe the cooperation as much more extensive, covering burgeoning capabilities such as repairing and repurposing satellites in orbit, or moving them around with nuclear propulsion. Intelligence agencies are more involved than ever in leveraging civilian technology, including artificial intelligence, robotic capabilities and production know-how.

“Yes, we do science, exploration and discovery,” then-NASA chief Jim Bridenstine told a government and industry gathering in September. He emphasized how well the Pentagon and NASA were working together. “What I hope people take away from this discussion,” Mr. Bridenstine said, referring to NASA, is that “we are an instrument of national power.”

George Stafford, a co-founder of Blue Canyon, sees NASA and the Pentagon using the same common, small-satellite cores for a range of applications. Military leaders need NASA’s knowledge to achieve some of their goals. For example, they “have to turn to NASA in order to get the expertise they need” to operate in the vicinity of the moon, Mr. Stafford said in an interview. “It has to be that kind of relationship,” he added, because “our adversaries are expanding their scope” to try to control space around the moon.

Steve Cook, deputy group president of Dynetics, sees orbital transfer of supercooled fuel, 3-D imaging of the moon’s surface and nuclear propulsion as core technologies spanning future military and NASA missions. Policy directives from the White House and the Space Force, he said, are aimed at leveraging the nation’s best technical capabilities to establish human outposts on the moon and, ultimately, to project U.S. power deeper into space. Others see a priority in identifying benign foreign satellites from potential weapons.

Some veteran space experts remain skeptical about how quickly tangible changes will materialize. There are a host of “very interesting and nice theoretical arguments,” about such interagency teamwork, said Doug Loverro, who has held senior management jobs at NASA and in the Pentagon. “But the world isn’t there yet.”

For Dan Jablonsky, chief executive of Maxar, more mundane goals such as assembling telescopes and repurposing vehicles in space open up huge possibilities for different parts of the U.S. government. Howard McCurdy, a space historian who teaches at American University, sees the inevitable blurring of once-clear distinctions between civil and military initiatives playing out in France, Japan and other countries.

“You’re going to see more dual-use civilian and military technology” by nations across the globe, he said.

Some goals are more aspirational than immediately realistic. NASA and the Space Force ultimately foresee joint programs to shield Earth from potentially cataclysmic collisions with asteroids. The Pentagon has hired a contractor to design a mini space station to research manufacturing and training in orbit.

Write to Andy Pasztor at [email protected]