The American space service’s most distant machines now sit 36,000 kilometers (22,000 miles) above the equator, in geostationary orbit. From there they watch for missile launches and collect routine surveillance for a power that worries about what it cannot see. Far beyond them is the Moon, which the military has now formally started looking at.
The first step is a short document, dated November 2, posted by the Department of the Air Force on a federal procurement website. It is a Request for Information, about the most modest thing the American state can issue: it buys nothing, promises nothing, and only asks who out there might be able to help. As Stephen Clark reported for Ars Technica, it signals interest in a “proliferated cislunar constellation”: an unspecified number of satellites, carrying out an undisclosed mission, near the Moon.
The paper
The notice on SAM.gov gives the effort a name, the Cislunar Space System, and almost nothing else. It calls for up to five spacecraft, each carrying a payload supplied by the government, to meet military “mission needs” in late 2029. Companies are asked whether they can offer a “rapid” and “low-risk” solution that fits the government’s “technical and programmatic objectives.” Then comes the sentence that reveals the wider plan: the first five “may serve as seed vehicles that will inform the acquisition strategy for a potential future proliferated cislunar constellation.”
“The government intends to award up to five firm fixed price preliminary design study contracts upon government consideration of the market information collected with this RFI and all other sources of information relevant to the effort,” the officials wrote. Responses are due November 24. Nothing in the wording commits the military to going further. Ars Technica notes that a commercial satellite usually takes two or three years to develop, so contracts would probably have to be signed some time in 2027 to keep the 2029 date.
A word that was forbidden
The man most associated with this push is Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the Space Force’s acquisition chief for advanced programs. Not long ago, by his own account, he was ordered to keep quiet about it. “There was no talk of cislunar, and basically I was told, ‘Don’t talk about cislunar, and stop getting into it,’” he said on October 21, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine.
Then the order of things changed. Last December President Donald Trump signed an executive order setting out his administration’s space policy. One section concerns the government’s ability to detect, characterize and counter threats to American space interests anywhere from low-Earth orbit out to cislunar space, as the region around the Moon is known. In September, the magazine reported, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called cislunar space a “warfighting domain.” By October, Purdy was speaking to industry like a man who had been let off the leash.
“I’ve got the Secretary of War and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs full on stating in public: ‘This is a warfighting domain.’ And so, I would ask you all, please jump on my cislunar bandwagon because I need some more friends here, along with our deep, passionate crew that have been working on this for years.”
A reflection, and no more than that: in a large bureaucracy a thing does not exist until someone above is willing to say its name. Between January and October a word went from forbidden to official doctrine. The Moon stayed exactly where it was. Only the permission to talk about it moved.
Ice and landing zones
Officials say the military’s job at the Moon is to protect American interests as the United States and China expand their lunar programs. Each country plans a series of robotic missions ending in crewed landings within a few years, and China has published its own timetable. Some American officials expect a contest over territory and resources. There are only so many safe places to land near the south pole that give access to the Moon’s water ice.
“We have a role to play, but we’re not the lead,” said Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s top general until he retired in August. “I just don’t want to get caught flat-footed when we start to have to protect US interests out there, so we’re along for the ride.”
In September the secretary of the Air Force announced that the US military has put unspecified weapons in orbit. Ars Technica does not expect weapons to go to the Moon any time soon. The likelier jobs are the ones military satellites already do around Earth: tracking and characterizing other objects, providing navigation and communications, and surveillance. That kind of watching is already common closer to home, where a Russian satellite was recently reported shadowing a commercial radar spacecraft.
Those who went first
The Defense Department has been to the Moon before. Clementine, a joint NASA-DOD spacecraft, found the first hints of water ice in permanently shadowed craters at the lunar south pole. So the soldiers helped find the ice that the soldiers are now preparing to guard.
Next comes Oracle-Mobility, a $75 million mission led by the Air Force Research Laboratory and previously called the Defense Deep Space Sentinel. It is due to launch toward the Moon in mid-2027. The laboratory says the satellite will be “highly mobile and will transit throughout cislunar space and experiment with techniques to maintain custody of objects in this region,” and that the mission “will allow AFRL to assess strengths and weaknesses of navigation techniques needed for future operational systems.” A second mission, Oracle-Prime, is supposed to be ready by the end of 2027. It will track satellites and debris from near Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1, a gravitationally stable point about three-quarters of the way to the Moon.
The paperwork has been building for a while. In April, the Space Force set up a Cislunar Coordination Office within Purdy’s portfolio to draw up a technology roadmap and a future architecture for the region.
Each Oracle is a single spacecraft, a scout. The document dated November 2 talks about five, and about the many more that might follow. Companies have until November 24 to say whether they can build them.