As we head into 2024 and look around, the space industry is fundamentally different from what it was decades ago, thanks to first- and second-order effects from embracing commercial innovation. SpaceX set a record-breaking cadence of nearly 100 launches last year, heralding a new revolution in access to space. The Space Development Agency (SDA) operationalized several tranches of its layered hybrid architecture and paved the way for the Defense Department’s orbital blueprint, the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. And all branches of the United States military, not just the Space Force, set into motion how they plan to leverage space in mesh networks supporting joint all-domain command and control systems.

But while the launch and satellite segments have come into their moment as government and industry become more and more integrated, the true unsung heroes of the space business are on the ground. Although vital to the overall space mission, ground systems rarely get the credit, and are shorthanded and under-resourced amidst the fanfare of kicking off new space missions.

In a highly-hybridized space future, it’s the ground segment — Command & Control (C2), mission management and processing and ground infrastructure — that leaves much to be desired. In almost every space system deployed since satellites were first launched for military missions, the ground systems that enabled them were woefully late, fragile, and generally inadequate. GPS OCX is only the most recent space ground acquisition disaster in a history stretching back decades.

Read More via SpaceNews