Source: True Anomaly
Tereza Pultarova of IEEE Spectrum reports that True Anomaly, a Colorado-based startup founded by former U.S. Space Force and Air Force officers, is developing Jackal, an innovative spacecraft designed to patrol and protect orbital space. As satellite numbers and space debris increase, Jackal aims to address the rising risks of collisions and space threats from countries like China and Russia, which have advanced space defense capabilities. The Jackal spacecraft, equipped with thrusters, sensors, and a large fuel tank, will move between orbits to inspect and monitor suspicious satellites. It is envisioned as a key player in ensuring “space superiority” by providing better situational awareness and possibly defending against robotic adversaries. True Anomaly plans to launch its first experimental space defenders by 2026. Pultarova writes:
In the coming years, fleets of orbit-policing spacecraft could zip around the planet, keeping an eye on space-tech ventures by China, Russia, and ill-intentioned actors elsewhere in the world. The mobile spacecraft concept presents a major shift away from the old-school way of doing things in space, in which satellites maintain simple orbits and try to avoid one another. Soon, those simple satellites will be looked after—and possibly hunted by—more agile spacecraft.
The spacecraft, called Jackal, was thought up by a group of former U.S. Space Force and Air Force officers. In 2022, the group founded Colorado-headquartered True Anomaly, with an aim to address the limitations they perceived in existing technologies that monitor near-Earth space. […]
Western experts don’t think the desire to keep space tidy is all that drives China. In December 2024, reports emerged of Chinese stalker satellites creeping around the geostationary ring—a region 36,000 kilometers above Earth’s surface where many spy and telecommunication satellites are stationed. Space situational-awareness companies also observed China performing strange maneuvers in low Earth orbit, which they compared to aerial dogfighting. […]
The first Jackals will be fitted with a payload suite including a four-megapixel camera and a set of short and long-wave infrared sensors to guide the spacecraft’s maneuvers around an object of interest. In the future, the U.S. Space Force, which cofunds True Anomaly’s tests, might want to outfit the Jackals with defensive weapons such as orbital lasers or microwave energy systems to keep the adversary’s robotic grabbers and dogfighters at bay. True Anomaly launched three demo satellites into low Earth orbit last year and announced plans to deploy its first experimental space defenders into geostationary and cislunar orbits (an orbit between Earth in the moon affected by the gravity of both) in 2026. […]
Read more here.
Also, read Russia and China Working on Anti-Satellite Weapons, Shadows in Orbit: Dogfights and EMP Blasts in Space, Secretive Russian Military Satellites Release Unknown Object into Space, & China’s Secret Satellite Killing Robot Nicknamed Roaming Dragon?
