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DoD Agencies to Invest Over $1 Billion in Low-Earth Orbit Space Technologies

June 12, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Sandra Erwin May 30, 2021 (spacenews.com)

• According to budget documents released May 28th, of the $1.2 billion defense budget proposed by the Biden administration for fiscal year 2022, $936.7 million is earmarked for the Space Development Agency’s communications network in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) known as the ‘Transport Layer’. The Missile Defense Agency is seeking about $292.8 million for space sensors, and the DARPA is requesting $42 million to deploy experimental satellites in LEO under the Blackjack program.

• These agencies report to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and are not part of Space Force, which has its own budget for research, development and procurement of new systems. But many of the LEO technologies developed by SDA, MDA and DARPA are expected to transition into larger Space Force programs.

• Of the $936.7 million for the Space Development Agency, $808.8 million goes for research, development, testing and evaluation (RDT&E), $53.8 million for operations and maintenance, and $74 million for procurement. This is a $600 million increase from 2021 and is the first time that SDA gets a separate funding line for procurement. With this budget, the SDA can move ahead with a demonstration of SDA’s first 28 satellites in the Transport Layer in 2022. This will be followed by the procurement of up to 150 Transport Layer satellites to launch in 2024.

• The $292.8 million for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) includes funding to allow hypersonic and ballistic tracking space sensor payloads to be launched to a low orbit in fiscal year 2023 as well as ground systems. This data would be used to track the trajectory of a maneuvering hypersonic missile so it can be intercepted. Two existing missile-tracking satellites in LEO that were launched in 2009 will be taken out of service. The MDA is also requesting $32 million for the Spacebased Kill Assessment (SKA) project, which uses a network of infrared satellite sensors to assess the performance of MDA’s interceptors.

• DARPA (the Defense Advanced research Projects Agency) is requesting $42 million to continue the Blackjack project to demonstrate the military utility of small satellites in LEO to provide communications, missile warning and navigation. Since 2018, the agency has awarded contracts to multiple vendors for satellite buses, payloads and an autonomous computing system to operate the constellation. DARPA wants to deploy as many as 20 satellites to demonstrate that a common satellite bus (launch) can be flown with different payloads and that a constellation can be operated autonomously.

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration’s defense budget proposal for fiscal year 2022 seeks more than $1.2 billion for military space systems in low-Earth orbit.

According to budget documents released May 28, nearly $900 million of that investment is for the Space Development Agency’s communications network in low-Earth orbit (LEO) known as the Transport Layer. The Missile Defense Agency is seeking about $300 million for space sensors, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is requesting $42 million to deploy experimental satellites in LEO under the Blackjack program.

These agencies report to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and are not part of the U.S. Space Force, which has its own budget for research, development and procurement of new systems. But many of the LEO technologies developed by SDA, MDA and DARPA are expected to transition into larger Space Force programs.

**Biden sniffing out more money for the defense budget**

Space Development Agency

The Pentagon is seeking $936.7 million in 2022 for the SDA, about a $600 million increase from 2021. That includes $808.8 million for research, development, testing and evaluation (RDT&E), $53.8 million for operations and maintenance, and $74 million for procurement.
This is the first time that SDA gets a separate funding line for procurement.

The agency’s large spending boost was expected for 2022 as SDA prepares to launch the first batch of its Transport Layer satellites and moves ahead with the procurement of up to 150 satellites that would launch in 2024.

The 2022 request funds the demonstration of SDA’s first 28 satellites — 20 Transport Layer Tranche 0 satellites and eight wide-field-of-view space sensors to detect and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles known as Tracking Layer Tranche 0.

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NASA Scientists Will Send This Robot Dog to Mars

January 10, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Kristin Houser December 27, 2020 (freethink.com)

• So far, NASA has landed four rovers on Mars. But because they’ve all used wheels to move around, they’ve only been able to explore the parts of the planet that are relatively flat. The parts they can’t reach with a wheeled Mars rover, however, are some of the most enticing to explore. More than sixty researchers and engineers from NASA, CalTech, MIT, and other organizations built a robot dog that they think could be the ideal Mars rover for exploring those hard-to-reach areas.

• Mars is riddled with caves and lava tubes. Those underground structures could be the best places to look for evidence of ancient extraterrestrial life. They could also be the key to human life surviving on Mars in the future. Martian colonists might be able to seek shelter underground, avoiding radiation, frigid temperatures, and meteorites that could jeopardize their safety on Mars’ surface.

• Boston Dynamics’ robot dog, “Spot”, became the possible answer. Spot already has an eclectic resume — it’s herded sheep in New Zealand, scouted factories for Ford, and even helped the NYPD during a recent hostage situation. While the robot dog is highly capable, it wasn’t ready for a job as a Mars rover right out of the gate. So the engineers made some modifications, which they presented during the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting on December 14th.

• They gave Spot a new sensor package, including a thermal camera and LiDaR (laser-scanning) sensor, and mounted a new power and computing package to its back. They also equipped the robot dog with AI software to help it learn as it explores, and a communication system it could use to send data from below ground to the surface. They renamed their newly upgraded robot dog “Au-Spot”, and it has already taken first place in a DARPA challenge that required it to navigate courses designed to look like underground urban environments.

• The researchers are currently testing the robot’s ability to navigate obstacle courses and map outdoor locations similar to the subterranean structures of Mars, such as the lava tubes found in Northern California. NASA hasn’t announced any impending plans to send Au-Spot to the Red Planet. But Au-Spot’s behaviors could one day enable revolutionary scientific missions to take place on the Martian surface and subsurface.

Boston Dynamics’ robot dog Spot has an eclectic resume — it’s herded sheep in New Zealand, scouted factories for Ford, and even helped the NYPD during a recent hostage situation.

However, the multi-talented bot’s next job might be the most remarkable yet: exploring Mars for NASA.

Limitations of a Wheeled Mars Rover

NASA has landed four rovers on Mars so far, and because they’ve all used wheels to move around, they’ve only been able to explore the parts of the planet that are relatively flat.

Scientists want to be able to scope out the entire planet, though — and the parts they can’t reach with a wheeled Mars rover are some of the most enticing.

Mars is riddled with caves and lava tubes, and those underground structures could be the best places to look for evidence of ancient extraterrestrial life.

They could also be the key to human life surviving on the Red Planet in the future — Martian colonists might be able to seek shelter underground, avoiding some of the radiation, frigid temperatures, and meteorites that could jeopardize their safety on Mars’ surface.

Now, more than 60 researchers and engineers from NASA, CalTech, MIT, and other organizations have built a Spot robot dog they think could be the ideal Mars rover for exploring those subsurface structures.

The Roving Robot Dog

While Boston Dynamics’ robot dog is already highly capable, it wasn’t exactly ready for a job as a Mars rover right out of the box, so the researchers had to make some modifications, which they presented during the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) annual meeting on December 14.

11:43 minute video of Au-Spot, NASA’s robot dog (‘Thomas Touma’ YouTube)

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The World of Back Engineered UFO Technology

October 31, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Ryan Dube October 16, 2020 (topsecretwriters.com)

• When one considers the world of reverse engineering, it is often assumed that this is done in secret government DARPA facilities. Nicholas Evans points out in Military Gadgets: “…airplane, tank, radar, jet engine, helicopter, electronic computer, stealth technology and internet, none of these that transformed warfare in the 20 and 21st century owed their initial development to the military but were accelerated into service by DARPA.” With an annual budget of $3.5B, compared to that of NASA at $22.6B, DARPA is limited to what it can afford to do.

• In 1987, Robert Lazar went on television claiming to have been part of an operation that worked on alien technology at the S-4 facility in Nevada where at least nine alien spacecraft were parked. He claimed EG&G hired him to help reverse engineer the technology. In the process, Lazar discovered a rusty, heavy substance he called “Element 115” that powered the alien spacecraft as an energy source which would produce anti-gravity. A vehicle producing this anti-gravity distortion could alter its own relation to the space around it, allowing it to dramatically shorten the distance between itself and its destination. As element 115 is not naturally found on Earth, Lazar suggested that our stocks of the element 115 were a gift from an off-planet civilization to be used as fuel for our own spacecraft.

• In 2004, a team of American and Russian scientists succeeded in producing element 115 as an unstable isotope, confirming the existence of such an atom. However, the isotope has virtually none of the qualities that Lazar described. Even ufologist Stanton Freidman debunked Lazar saying that there’s no evidence he ever attended CalTech or MIT as claimed. Other academic physicists and engineers found the alleged propulsion system to be “critically flawed”.

• In 1997, Philip Corso published the book, The Day After Roswell (co-authored by William J. Birnes), relating how he stewarded extraterrestrial artifacts recovered from a crash at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, at the direction of the first Director of Central Intelligence, Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter. Different parts of the Roswell craft were sent to various defense companies, who reverse engineered their properties, and that this led to the development of achievements such as accelerated particle beam devices, fiber optics, night vision equipment, lasers, integrated circuit chips and Kevlar material. Corso also said that the Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1980’s was meant to disrupt the electronic guidance systems of incoming enemy warheads, as well as enemy extraterrestrial spacecraft.

• A DuPont lab chemist, Stephanie Kwolek, is credited, however, for inventing the liquid crystalline that could be spun into fabric known as Kevlar. And the contractors who reverse-engineered these technologies were told that the parts were stolen from Russia. The ‘Klass Files’ and reviewer Tom Mahood say that much of Corso’s account has minor factual flaws, or are simply “uncheckable”. Said Mahood about Corso, “Is it some sort of “disinformation”? Many will say it is, but I don’t know. Honestly, I’m not completely sure just what to make of it. I know it’s not the truth, that he’s likely a loon, but beyond that….”

• Richard Boylan includes the TR3-B triangular craft among twelve US classified aircraft that employs anti-gravity technology. The November 2000 issue of Popular Mechanics identifies it as a ‘Lenticular Reentry Vehicle, a nuclear-powered flying saucer – the first version of which allegedly went operational in 1962’. defense industry alleged insider Edgar Rothschild Fouche claimed that the TR-3B generates an intense magnetic field that reduces its weight by 89 percent. But that it does not have a an antigravity propulsion system. It merely uses the Biefeld-Brown effect to reduce its weight so that more conventional propulsion systems such as scramjets can give it amazing speed.

• ‘Morphing metals’ are materials which have the ability to bend on command, “sense” pressure, transform from liquid to solid when placed in a magnetic field, and shape-memory polymers. Memory materials are used in alloys like Nitinol, which have the stiffness of steel but can return to its previous shape when heat is applied. Anna McGowan, program manager at NASA’s Langley Research Center, says that “This is technology that most people aren’t aware even exists.”

• NASA science teams at the Langley Research Center are currently working on intrinsically “smart materials” which can perform self-diagnosis and self-repair. These “self-healing” materials are human-made (not alien-made) of long-chain molecules called ionomers which react to penetration, such as a bullet, by closing behind it. The implications of this technology for space flight are tremendous.

• Philip Corso, Robert Lazar and Richard Boylan all claim that our latest technologies come from the reverse engineering of alien craft and artifacts. But each of these technologies have seemingly verified ‘human sources’ that prove otherwise. Consequently, there is no fast, hard evidence to support any of these reverse engineering tales. Instead, these stories generate questions about the creators of these tales and their motives for doing so.

• [Editor’s Note] And the deep state spin on debunking alien technology continues…..

The world of reverse engineering is indeed a strange one. It’s a landscape of claims and counter claims. Fantastic stories and skeptical analysis. The characters are legendary and the truth elusive.

One constant is the proposition that DARPA may be the agency responsible for any advances in the technology. While DARPA does have a hand in a lot of advances in technology, they only push projects forward – they don’t do the work.

As noted by Nicholas Evans in Military Gadgets: “…airplane, tank, radar, jet engine, helicopter, electronic computer, stealth technology and internet, none of these that transformed warfare in the 20 and 21st century owed their initial development to the military but were accelerated into service by DARPA.”

And they work with a limited budget.

A quick look at the DOD fiscal 2020 budget report shows the research budget for DARPA at a little less than 3.5 billion per year. NASA had a 22.6 billion per year operating budget of which the shuttle takes a third.

Robert Lazar and Element 115

Back to the characters.

In 1987, Robert Lazar shocked the world when he went on television claiming to have been part of an operation that worked on alien technology. Lazar said that the government has possession of at least nine alien spacecraft at a base called S-4.

He claimed EG&G hired him to help reverse engineer the technology in the alien craft for use in U.S. military vehicles and power production. In the process, he discovered a rusty, heavy substance he called “Element 115” that powered the alien spacecraft.

Lazar explained how the atomic element 115 (or ununpentium (Uup)) served as a nuclear fuel for the propulsion of the

alien craft. Element 115 provided an energy source which would produce anti-gravity under particulate bombardment.

As the intense strong nuclear force field of element 115’s nucleus was properly amplified, the resulting effect would be a distortion of the surrounding gravitational field. A vehicle producing this distortion could alter its own relation to the space around it, allowing it to dramatically shorten the distance between itself and its destination.

Lazar speculated that element 115’s probable absence on Earth was due to the fact that the supernovae in Earth’s region of the galaxy were insufficiently massive to produce nuclei of this density. He postulated that other parts of the universe could be richer in this element. Lazar indicated stocks of the element 115 were a gift from an off-planet civilization to be used as fuel for our own spacecraft.

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Virginia Rocket Launch Site is About to Grow With the Most Successful Startup Since SpaceX

October 15, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Christian Davenport October 2, 2020 (washingtonpost.com)

• Over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, down past Chincoteague toward the southern tip of the Eastern Shore, sits an isolated spit of shoreline near a wildlife refuge. Wallops Island, Virginia is home to one of the most unusual and little known rocket launch sites in the country.

• Wallops Island contained a naval air station during World War II. In the late 1950s, with the dawn of the Space Age, the air station morphed into the Wallops Flight Facility, serving as a test site for the Mercury space program. The facility has now reinvented itself yet again as a modern commercial space industry rocket hub launching national security missions for Rocket Lab, and is soon to launch missions to the International Space Station for Northrop Grumman. The Wallops facility is poised to become the second busiest launch site in the country, behind Cape Canaveral, which itself is on track to launch 39 rockets into orbit this year.

• Over the last 25 years, the state of Virginia has pumped $250M into the ‘Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport’. In addition, NASA has made $15.7M in upgrades to the site, including a mission operations control center, which opened in 2018. The state also contributed $15M to repair a launch pad after an Antares rocket exploded in 2014.

• Perhaps the most successful space upstart since Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Rocket Lab first considered Cape Canaveral. But Wallops was the winner because it had a facility nearby where the company could process its payloads, get the satellites ready for launch and then mate them to a rocket quickly. “The whole facility is designed for rapid launch,” said Rocket Lab CEO, Peter Beck. “And that’s a real requirement out there right now from our national security and national defense forces, to have an ability to respond to threats quickly.”

• At 60 feet tall, Rocket Lab’s ‘Electron’ rocket may be about a quarter of the size of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. But the company hopes it will be a workhorse, launching once a month from Wallops, in flights that should be visible up and down the Mid-Atlantic. The Electron rocket has already had 14 successful launches to orbit from its launch site in New Zealand, earning a reputation for quick turnaround in an industry where getting rockets ready to fly was once a months-long endeavor. The Pentagon and NASA have taken notice.

• NASA has hired Rocket Lab to launch a small satellite to the Moon in 2021 to gather data about the thin lunar atmosphere, as a precursor for human missions. Instead of launching large, expensive satellites that stay in orbit for years and are targets for potential adversaries, the Pentagon is interested in putting up swarms of smaller, inexpensive satellites that could be easily replaced. Both NASA and DARPA are looking at Rocket Lab’s Wallops facility as a launch base having the desired short turnaround time between launches.

• While the number of launches at Wallops now is relatively low, the cadence could grow dramatically, especially as Rocket Lab gets going. And Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, chief of space operations for the US Space Force, has made it clear the department wants to rely heavily on the private sector. “We have developed a significant amount of partnerships in the national security space business,” said General Raymond during a recent event. “We share some of those partners. We share an industrial base.”

• Wallops wants to capitalize on the growth says Dale Nash, CEO and executive director of Virginia Space. “[W]e can get a few more launchpads close together in here.” “We’re urbanizing.” “One launch a month will not be a big deal.” “Once a week, once we get going, won’t be a big deal either. … We have the capability to grow to 50 or 60 launches a year.”

• Richard Branson has also gotten into the small rocket business with ‘Virgin Orbit’ that would launch a small rocket by dropping it from the wing of a 747 airplane. But while the space industry has made strides, there are still more failures than successes, especially in the early attempts to build small rockets. Rocket Lab has been the unlikely success story. Founded by Peter Beck in 2006, it today has a significant backlog of launches.

• Initially, Beck said, the company planned to ditch its rockets in the ocean, as had been the practice for decades. But like SpaceX, Rocket Lab intends to recover its first stages so they can be reused for future flights for greater efficiency. But instead of flying the boosters back to land and then firing the engines to slow it down, as SpaceX does, Rocket Lab is going to have its booster deploy a parachute to slow it down as it falls back through the atmosphere. Then it would have a helicopter retrieve it with a grappling hook.

• In addition to the NASA moon mission, Beck has long been intrigued with Venus, and planned to send a probe there to look for signs of life. The Venus mission, tentatively scheduled for 2023, would be largely self-funded and launch most likely from New Zealand. “If you can prove that there is life on Venus, then it’s fair to assume that life is not unique but likely prolific throughout the universe,” tweeted Beck.

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. — Over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, down past Chincoteague toward the southern

tip of the Eastern Shore, sits an isolated spit of shoreline, near a wildlife refuge, that is home to one of the most unusual, and little known, rocket launch sites in the country.

Born as a Navy air station during World War II, it has launched more than 16,000 rockets, most of them small sounding vehicles used for scientific research. But the Wallops Flight Facility, which at the dawn of the Space Age played a role as a test site for the Mercury program, is about to reinvent itself at a time when the commercial space industry is booming and spreading beyond the confines of Florida’s Cape Canaveral.

After the Federal Aviation Administration last month granted Rocket Lab, a commercial launch company, a license to fly its small Electron rocket from the facility, Wallops could soon see a significant increase in launches as the company joins Northrop Grumman in launching from this remote site. While Rocket Lab is largely focused on national security missions, Northrop Grumman launches its Antares rocket to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station on cargo resupply missions at a rate of about two a year, including a picture-perfect launch from the Virginia coast Friday at 9:16 p.m. Northrop also launches its Minotaur rocket from Wallops.

Rocket Lab wants to launch to orbit as frequently as once a month from Wallops, which would make the facility the

second busiest launch site in the country, behind Cape Canaveral, which is on track to fly 39 rockets to orbit this year.

Hoping to give birth to another rocket hub on the Eastern Seaboard, the state of Virginia has over the last 25 years pumped some $250 million into what it calls the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, most of that coming in the last decade, said Dale Nash, the agency’s CEO and executive director of Virginia Space. NASA has also made some significant upgrades to the site, including a $15.7 million mission operations control center, which opened in 2018.

The state also contributed to the $15 million it took to repair a launchpad after an Antares rocket exploded in 2014.

The efforts paid off when Rocket Lab, perhaps the most successful space upstart since Elon Musk’s SpaceX, announced last year it would launch its Electron rocket from here. Once NASA signs off on the company’s autonomous flight abort system, it should be cleared to launch, with a mission coming potentially before the end of the year.

Initially, Rocket Lab looked at Cape Canaveral, of course. But there are already a lot of big companies stationed there — Boeing, the United Launch Alliance and SpaceX. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is renovating a pad there while building a massive manufacturing facility nearby. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

“We ran a competitive process,” Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s chief executive, said in an interview. In the end, Wallops was the winner because it had a facility nearby where the company could process its payloads, get the satellites ready for launch and then mate them to a rocket quickly.

“The whole facility is designed for rapid launch,” Beck said. “And that’s a real requirement out there right now from our national security and national defense forces, to have an ability to respond to threats quickly.”

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DARPA Awards $14M to Develop Nuclear Rocket Engine for US Military

October 12, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Luke Dormehl October 2, 2020 (yahoo.com)

• The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Gryphon Technologies $14 million to develop a nuclear thermal propulsion system for the US military rockets (similar to the one pictured above). The High-Assay Low Enriched Uranium (HALEU) Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) system will be used to enable the military to carry out missions in cislunar space, or the area between the Earth and the orbit of the Moon.

• “A successfully demonstrated NTP system will provide a leap ahead in space-propulsion capability, allowing agile and rapid transit over vast distances as compared to present propulsion approaches,” said Tabitha Dodson, Gryphon’s chief engineer. In an NTP system, a nuclear reactor heats a propellant, like hydrogen, to extreme temperatures. It then expels it via a nozzle to create thrust. This method could be significantly more efficient than current chemical rockets, with a ‘thrust-to-weight ratio’ reportedly 10,000 times greater than electric propulsion.

• The CEO of Gryphon, P.J. Braden, said in a statement. “We are proud to support DRACO and the development and demonstration of NTP, a significant technological advancement in efforts to achieve cislunar space awareness.” The NTP system development is part of DARPA’s Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program.

• Between this, the rise of Space Force, NASA commissioning private companies to retrieve space resources, and the continued work of companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, space exploration is about as fast-moving and full of promise as it’s been in many years.

• [Editor’s Note] The Pentagon’s deep state infested Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency named its advanced propulsion development program “DRACO”? That is a bit on the nose, isn’t it?

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Gryphon Technologies $14 million to develop a nuclear thermal propulsion system for the U.S. military. Part of DARPA’s Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program, the High-Assay Low Enriched Uranium (HALEU) Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) system will be used to enable the military to carry out missions in cislunar space, meaning the area between the Earth and the orbit of the moon.

“A successfully demonstrated NTP system will provide a leap ahead in space-propulsion capability, allowing agile and rapid transit over vast distances as compared to present propulsion approaches,” Tabitha Dodson, Gryphon’s chief engineer on the support team and a national expert in NTP systems, said in a statement.

The militarization of space, this time largely involving the United States and China, has been in the news in recent years in a way that it hasn’t since the decades-old Space Race between the U.S. and the Soviets. The idea of using Nuclear Thermal Propulsion to power spacecraft is that a nuclear reactor utilized to heat a propellant like hydrogen to extreme temperatures, prior to expelling it via a nozzle in order to create thrust, could be significantly more efficient than current chemical rockets. It would also have a thrust-to-weight ratio that is reportedly 10,000 times greater than electric propulsion.

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Space Force Doesn’t Want to Send a Human to Do a Robot’s Job

October 11, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Nathan Strout September 29, 2020 (c4isrnet.com)

• While Space Force officials have tried to keep the focus on what their personnel will do on the ground to support the nation’s space assets, this hasn’t dampened public speculation as to when Space Force will they send humans into orbit. A recent recruiting ad seemingly implied its members would literally be going to space.

• But for anyone joining the Space Force to be an astronaut, Maj. Gen. John Shaw has some bad news. “I think it will happen,” Shaw said on September 29th, “But I think it’s a long way off.” Shaw serves as both commander of Space Force’s Space Operations Command and for the U.S. Space Command’s Combined Force Space Component Command. Shaw sees two big reasons why it’s not likely to happen soon: “First, space isn’t really all that habitable for humans.” “And the second is, we’re getting darned good at this robotics thing in space.”

• “You know, the best robots that humans have ever created are probably satellites — either ones that explore other planets or operated within our own Earth/moon system,” said Shaw. “GPS satellites might be among those …and we’re only getting better with machine learning and artificial intelligence. We’re going to have an awful lot of automated and autonomous systems operating in Earth and lunar orbit and solar orbit in the days and years to come doing national security space activity.”

• The Space Force and the US Air Force are investing in robotic capabilities that preclude the need for humans in space. Most notable is the Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Spacecraft (RSGS) program being run by DARPA (illustrated above). With RSGS, DARPA wants to develop a robotic arm that can be placed on a free flying spacecraft which can navigate up to satellites to conduct repairs, orbital adjustments, or even install new payloads. DARPA hopes to launch a robotically enhanced vehicle into orbit in late 2022, where SpaceLogistics will provide the spacecraft and DARPA will provide the robotic arm.

• The Air Force Research Laboratory is building ROBOpilot, a robot that can fly planes, completely replacing the need for human pilots. It can press pedals to activate brakes, pull on the yoke to steer, adjust the throttle, and even read the dashboard instruments to see where it is and where it’s going.

• The secretive X-37b space plane is an unmanned vehicle is currently able to take off, carry host experiments into orbit, deploy satellites, and return to earth without humans on board.

• But Shaw believes that it’s inevitable. “At some point, yes, we will be putting humans into space,” said Shaw. “They may be operating command centers somewhere in the lunar environment or someplace else that are continuing to operate an architecture that is largely perhaps autonomous.”

• In July, the Sierra Nevada Corporation announced it had received a study contract for such autonomous orbital outposts in low Earth orbit. Missions will include hosting payloads, supporting space assembly and manufacturing, microgravity experimentation, logistics, training, testing and evaluations. SpaceNews confirmed that two other companies – Nanoracks and Arkisys – have also received study contracts.

• While these orbital outposts will be unmanned for now, a Defense Innovation Unit spokesperson said that it would be interested in securing a “human rating” for future outposts. So even if humans on orbit are not part of the military’s immediate plans, it remains a tantalizing possibility. “At some point that will happen. I just don’t know when,” said Shaw. “And it’s anybody’s guess to pick the year when that happens.”

Since it was established in Dec. 2019 — and probably even before that — one question has plagued the U.S. Space Force: when will they send humans into orbit?

While Space Force officials have tried to keep the focus on what their personnel will do on the ground to support the nation’s space assets, they’ve done little to dampen speculation. The Space Force probably didn’t help itself when it released a recruiting ad earlier this year that seemingly implied its members would literally be going to space.

But for anyone joining the Space Force to be an astronaut, Maj. Gen. John Shaw has some potentially bad news.

“I think it will happen,” said Shaw during the AFWERX Engage Space event Sept. 29. “But I think it’s a long way off.”

Shaw would know. He’s been a key member of the lean staff standing up both the Space Force and U.S. Space Command, serving simultaneously as commander of the former’s Space Operations Command and the latter’s Combined Force Space Component Command. While Shaw sees humans in orbit as part of the military’s plans somewhere down the line, there are two big reasons why it’s not likely to happen soon:
“First, space isn’t really all that habitable for humans. We’ve learned that since our early space days,” he explained. “And the second is, we’re getting darned good at this robotics thing in space.”

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The Secret US Military Device for Seeing in the Past

August 1, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Brian McGleenon July 18, 2020 (express.co.uk)

• Dr Steven Greer is one of the world’s leading authorities on extraterrestrials and an explorer of “consciousness technologies”, i.e.: a research and development frontier that combines meta physics with quantum mechanics, or, how “electronic systems are interfacing with the quanta of thought”. Founder of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Greer has briefed presidents and heads of state on the ET phenomenon.

• Greer told Express.co.uk that he had a ‘military adviser’ who was once attached to US Naval Intelligence at the old White Oaks naval facility in Silver Spring, Maryland outside of Washington DC. The adviser told Greer about a time-traveling device that the US Navy had developed in the 1970s at the secret weapons laboratory at White Oaks, which allowed the scientists and intelligence agents view events of the past. This device could tune in to the “white noise of space-time” and extract the information about what happened a century ago, or a million years ago, at any given location. Greer speculates that this ‘white noise’ that the device taps into is actually the ‘Akashic Record’. Ancient mystics describe the Akashic Record as the storage place for all human events, thoughts, words, emotions, and intent that have ever occurred in the past, present, or future. Greer believes that this record is stored in interdimentional space and the Navy’s device could interface with this interdimentional realm.

• Greer notes that the CIA’s successful development of remote viewing in the 1970s, where one can spy on anyone remotely through their consciousness, shows that the mind is not limited to our brain or our bodies. “Neither time nor space limits awareness.” He believes that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations are able to utilize quantum mechanics through consciousness to travel the universe and instantly appear or disappear from a physical realm. This would explain certain instances of strange UFO sightings, alien contacts, and paranormal apparitions.

• Greer says that he had interviewed many “whistle blowers” about advanced technologies that seemed to work via quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement describes how two particles that are separated by vast distances in space, or time, can be linked and how their movements correlate. Quantum mechanics scientist, John Archibald Wheeler of Princeton University, explains that according to the laws of quantum mechanics, atomic particles exist in state of constant possibility. They can be anywhere, everywhere or nowhere at all in both the dimensions of time and space. What anchors them into position is the active thought of the observer, such as a scientist in a laboratory.

• Finally, Greer discussed the development of artificial intelligence such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink project which will create a low-latency broadband link in the human brain to facilitate thought-control of electronic devices. But with the growth of AI, Greer cautioned, there is the risk of the machines seizing control over human thoughts.

• [Editor’s Note] There have been many accounts that the government has experimented with time-viewing/time-travel technology for decades.

In a 1964 television interview, ET contactee George Van Tassell said that human-looking extraterrestrials showed him technology that could be used to view a visual scene from any historical time period, which the US Navy had in its possession. The description of this device that could view past events was very similar to what the legendary UFO whistleblower Bob Lazar revealed in 1989 as “Project Looking Glass”, a classified project run by the US Navy out of the S-4 facility at Area 51 since the early 1960s. Lazar claimed that the ‘Looking Glass’ technology was based on the distortion of space-time by gravity.

The earliest reference of ‘Project Looking Glass’ type technology came from Italy in the 1950s. A Dominican priest by the name of Father Pellegrino Ernetti invented a ‘chronovisor’ device capable of peering into the past by electronically modifying the frequencies of chants by Benedictine monks. Ernetti claimed to have witnessed the crucifixion of Christ and other historical events by this device. The chronoviser technology was turned over to the Vatican who passed it along to the CIA who continued to develop the technology through deep state black budgets in the 1960s and 70s.

CIA whistleblower Andrew Basiago confirmed the CIA’s experimentation with Ernetti’s ‘chronovisor’. Basiago said that from 1967-1971, as a six-year old boy, he was involved in ‘Project Pegasus’ when the CIA and DARPA refined the chronoviser technology. In 1970, Basiago and other child participants regularly visited various classified chronoviser facilities in northern New Jersey where they were able to access past and future events. Basiago corroborated his claim in a 2015 interview with C2C radio host Art Bell, when he told Bell that he remembered seeing Bell working on a classified project in an ITT facility in Nutley, New Jersey in 1970. An astounded Bell admitted that he was indeed employed by ITT in a classified NATO communication project at the time, which Bell had never publicly revealed. Basiago asserted that chronovisor technology was just one among many ways in which the CIA could view the past and future in order to gain intelligence data, and to also attempt to manipulate history through time travel missions.

In his 1992 book, Montauk Project: Experiments in Time, Preston Nichols described bizarre military experiments conducted at Montauk Air Station, Long Island, NY from 1971 to 1983. A navigation control chair from an extraterrestrial craft was set up at the facility. When a person sat in the ‘Montauk chair’, their psychic abilities became so enhanced that they were able to distort time to look into the past or future. Nichols described what happened when a test subject, Duncan Cameron, sat in the Montauk chair. He was directed by his military intelligence handlers to concentrate on an opening in time. A ‘hole’ or ‘time portal’ would then appear in front of the chair, which a person could walk through. It looked like a circular corridor with a light at the other end. The time door would remain open so long as Duncan (or whomever) would concentrate on a particular time in the past or future.

Peering ahead into future events and timelines emboldens the viewer to change circumstances in order to change that future timeline. This causes fractures in the timeline with many possible futures. As a result, peering into future timelines became undependable, and CIA/DARPA intelligence groups have lessened their use of this sort of timeline manipulation.

In a 2019 article by Dr Michael Salla entitled: “Project Looking Glass – the Q Anon & Deep State Temporal War”, Salla noted that both the deep state and the military intelligence ‘Alliance’ factions have access to this sort of time-viewing and time-travel technology, to peer into the future and anticipate each other’s moves. The deep state has used the technology to anticipate and thwart Alliance actions against them, as foretold by Q Anon. But since this is an undependable technology due to fractured timelines, both sides have focused more on time-travel technology. This has created a ‘temporal war’ with both factions attempting to manage past events in order to influence future timelines, to suit their respective agendas.

Founder of the Centre for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence Doctor Steven Greer described a strange

mechanism that was developed at the US secret weapons laboratory at White Oaks in Maryland. During his research he described how a military advisor for the US Navy informed him of a device that could extract information in a specific location from “a century ago, or even a thousand years ago”.

Speaking to Express.co.uk Doctor Greer said: “One of my military advisors was with naval intelligence.

“In the old days there was a naval facility at White Oaks outside Washington DC.

“The facility had an electronic device that could extract from any point in space something that had happened in the past in that location.
“They called it the white noise of space-time.”

The UFO researcher explained this time travelling project was developed in the 1970s.

Doctor Greer described it as an electronic system “that allows you to see what happened an hour ago in the space that you are sitting in at that time”.

**actual image of Jesus Christ in Father Ernetti’s ‘chronoviser’**

He added: “You can also extract the information about what happened a century ago, or a thousand years ago, or a million years ago.”

Doctor Greer, who is one of the world’s leading authorities on extraterrestrials said that he had interviewed many “whistle blowers” about advanced technologies that seemed to work via quantum entanglement.

Quantum entanglement describes how two particles that are separated by vast distances in space, or time, can be linked and how their movements mysteriously correlate.

He said: “I briefed former ministers of defence on these projects.

“There are highly compartmentalised projects that have not been revealed to even members of the UK Government.

The UFO researcher suggested that the machines tapped into “what mystics used to call the Akashic record”.

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Solar One: The First Manned Interstellar Spaceship

May 12, 2020
ExoNews Editor

April 29, 2020 (spacedaily.com)

• In a new paper (see here), astronomer Alberto Caballero presents the concept and design of a light-sail propelled by a laser propulsion system that could reach 30% the speed of light and reach the Alpha Centauri star system in 15 years. A small nuclear fission reactor would provide the needed electicity. Caballero says that the 2-crew spacecraft, called ‘Solar One’, could become the first manned interstellar spaceship by the late-20s.

• The human-crewed spaceship would integrate the LANL Mega Power Reactor, a larger version of NASA’ Sunjammer light sail, and an updated version of the HELLADS laser system, all of which are existing or ‘near-term’ technologies. The LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory) Mega Power Reactor is a 35 ton fission reactor able to produce continuous power for 12 years. The 38m x 38m Sunjammer light sail is proposed by NASA. And the HELLADS (High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System) is a ground-based laser weapon system operated by DARPA. It would all be launched with SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket. The total cost of Solar One spacecraft would be in the $100 million range.

• Solar One’s large sail would produce an incredible force resulting in a constant acceleration and deceleration during the trip. “The key aspect of this idea resides in the extremely large size of the light sail” – says Caballero. When the spaceship is neither accelerating nor decelerating, the light sail would be rolled up to reduce possible damage by asteroids. The module containing the nuclear micro-reactor would have a protective coating thicker than the rest of the spaceship to protect it from micro-asteroid impacts. But in case of nuclear failure, the chances to survive would be minimal.

• Once the destination is reached, the crew could orbit the exoplanet, take images and send a robot to the surface. If the air is breathable, the crew could choose to land and personally explore the exoplanet.

In a new paper, astronomer Alberto Caballero presents the concept and design of a beam-powered propulsion system that could become the first manned interstellar spaceship by the late-20s.

Solar One, the name he gives to the spaceship, could reach 30% the speed of light, reaching Alpha Centauri system in 15 years.

Alberto argues that, despite light-sail spacecrafts such as the so-called Starships from the Starshot project have already been designed, they might not be the best option to explore exoplanets in detail.

The new type of spaceship would have a light-sail propelled by a laser system, which would receive the necessary electricity from a small nuclear fission reactor.

The Concept

Solar One is a proposed human-crewed spaceship that would integrate three existing or near-term technologies: the LANL Mega Power Reactor, a larger version of NASA’ Sunjammer light sail, and an updated version of the HELLADS laser system.

Firstly, the LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory) Mega Power Reactor is a fission reactor that weighs 35 tons. It is able to produce up to 10 MW, or the equivalent of 2 MW of continuous power for 12 years.

Secondly, the Sunjammer light sail is a proposed NASA sail with a size of 38 x 38 m (1,444 m2).

Thirdly, HELLADS (High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System) is a ground-based laser weapon system demonstrator operated by DARPA, with a goal of 5 kg per KW by 2023.

The idea behind Solar One is to combine these three projects. A 2-crew spaceship with a total mass of 91 tons would be powered by a mile-long light sail in order to achieve the speed of 0.3c.

The large sail would produce an incredible force of more than 170,000 newtons, resulting in a constant acceleration and deceleration of 0.18g during the first and last one year and a half of the trip.

“The key aspect of this idea resides in the extremely large size of the light sail” – says Alberto.

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Glowing Orbs Spotted Hovering Above Kansas, Authorities Clueless

June 29, 2019
ExoNews Editor

by Nirmal Narayanan June 22, 2019 (ibtimes.co.in)

• On June 20, 2019, two glowing orbs were spotted hovering in the skies over Kansas City.

• “Even the local news recorded a few and posted to Twitter what they had seen. This prompted DARPA to respond saying that they had released three lighter than air objects in the area (i.e.: balloons). I believe since DARPA is a government agency that it is lying to the public and trying to cover up an actual UFO fleet over Kansas City,” said self-styled UFO expert, Scott C Waring. “The US government will try anything and everything to cover up actual UFO sightings.”

• The National Weather Service tweeted: “We honestly have no explanation for the floating objects over Kansas City.”

• Other conspiracy theorists proffer that these glowing orbs could be secret anti-gravity military vessels developed by superpowers like the United States, Russia or China.

In an interesting development, two glowing orbs were spotted in the skies of Kansas. The sighting soon went viral on online platforms, and even weather authorities are completely clueless about the bizarre sighting.

The National Weather Service (NWS) wrote on Twitter that they literally have no explanation for the mysterious sighting. As NWS failed to give a proper explanation, several social media users started alleging that alien spaceships have reached the earth to monitor human activities. Some users even went a step ahead and assured that extraterrestrials are gearing up for an invasion.

We honestly have no explanation for the floating objects over Kansas City.
— NWS Kansas City (@NWSKansasCity) June 21, 2019

Popular UFO researcher Scott C Waring also analyzed the clip, and he alleged that the government is trying to cover up realities of alien life. “Thousands of eyewitness in Kansas City saw huge UFO orbs in the sky over the city two days ago. Even the local news recorded a few and posted to Twitter what they had seen. This prompted DARPA to respond saying that they had released three lighter than air objects in the area. I believe since DARPA is a government agency that it is lying to the public and trying to cover up an actual UFO fleet over Kansas City. The US government will try anything and everything to cover up actual UFO sightings and here is 100% proof that they are doing it again here,” wrote Waring on his website ET Date Base.

1:03 minute video of two orbs over Kansas City on June 20, 2019 (Clint Banning YouTube channel)

1:18 minute video of two orbs over Kansas City on June 20, 2019 (Haki Social Media YouTube channel)

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US Military Testing Mood-Altering Brain Implants on Soldiers

December 20, 2017
ExoNews Editor

by Paul Seaburn November 30, 2017 (mysteriousuniverse.org)

• The scientific journal, Nature, reports that researchers have announced at a recent meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington DC that two DARPA-funded research projects are perfecting the mapping and implanting of a computer chip algorithm into the human brain to recognize and control mood shifts.

• They claim that it will provide a new and effective way to treat soldiers and veterans with severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

• One research team is located at the University of California, San Francisco and the other at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The California team says that they’ve already tested this brain stimulation on humans.

• What else will these brain stimulators to control or modify in human soldiers? [Editor’s Note] Is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) creating super soldiers and super spies for the military and the CIA?

“Mood-altering brain implants.”

What part of that sounds good? Throw in “US military,” and “testing on soldiers” and you have the plot of a dystopian movie. Unfortunately, you also have news this week that this is real and tests have already begun. Does the fact that its purported purpose is to eventually treat mental disorders that no other therapies can help make you feel any better?

While this type of brain implant has been discussed for years, previous attempts to alter moods with implanted computer chips have failed. That’s not the case with these latest experiments, according to a new report in the journal Nature on a presentation made by researchers last week at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) meeting in Washington DC. Two different projects are being funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the purpose of providing new and more effective treatment for treating soldiers and veterans with severe depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.
Neuroscientist Edward Chang from the University of California, San Francisco, heads the team that is mapping the brain activities caused by moods and mood changes in six epileptics. The map will allow them to create a chip with an algorithm that recognizes oncoming mood shifts and sends signals to control them. Chang claims they’ve already tested this brain stimulation on humans.

The second team from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston is mapping the brain activity related to behaviors in people with multiple mental disorders. Their goal is to use the maps to develop algorithms to recognize problem behaviors (like distraction) caused by the illnesses and deliver brain stimulations to direct the person to more appropriate behaviors. They are currently looking for test subjects.

The researchers feel that this new type of mood and behavior altering via chip implants will work where others have failed because the mapping will allow them to personalize and pinpoint the electrical stimulations. On the downside, they still need a way to precisely measure the brain impulses so they don’t over-stimulate the person into states of extreme happiness or worse mental illness.

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Tag: DARPA