Arati Prabhakar, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has said DARPA has launched programs that seek to make the space environment a “real-time operational domain†in support of military missions, intelligence and other national security efforts, DoD News reported Tuesday.
Cheryl Pellerin writes Prabhakar said at the 4th annual Defense One Summit that DARPA has introduced the second phase of its Experimental Spaceplane program that seeks to expedite the launch of satellite systems and other assets into space.
The XS-1 program “is a reusable first stage that’s designed to be able to put 3,000 or 5,000 pounds into low earth orbit … at a very low cost point — a few million dollars — but very significantly the objective on the DARPA program is by the end of the program to fly that spacecraft 10 times in 10 days,†Prabhakar said during a conversation with Christopher Mims, technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, at the event.
She also discussed DARPA’s work on robotics systems designed to facilitate repairs and inspections of space assets at geostationary Earth orbit through the Phoenix program, according to the report.
