Lauren Knausenberger, deputy chief information officer at the U.S. Air Force, said the service’s Kessel Run software development team has been going through some growing pains but continues to ask questions on how to provide more value and improve security, FCW reported Wednesday. 

Amid the struggles, she said the team continues to ask "how can I be more secure than I was yesterday, how can I deliver more value, and just try to stay question on those end users."

Knausenberger said Tuesday at the Billington Cybersecurity's virtual summit that Kessel Run’s growing pains could be associated with its rapid growth. 

“And so just like any small business that grows very fast, you get to a point where you have to adapt your practices and try to keep those things that make you awesome and unique but still kind of grow up as a bigger organization. That's what they're struggling through right now,” she added.

The U.S. Space Force and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have begun to jointly operate a weather satellite that has been reassigned for military use. The Electro-optical Infrared Weather System Geostationary (EWS-G1) satellite will collect space-based environmental data under a partnership between USSF and NOAA, Peterson Air Force Base said.

The satellite originally functioned to gather weather data over the country's East Coast under the former name Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-13). This original assignment ran over 10 years beginning in 2006.

EWS-G1 now works to characterize clouds and produce weather imagery for the U.S. military's operations in the Indian Ocean area.

"This effort demonstrates speed by allowing the spacecraft to be moved and operated in the Indian Ocean region far earlier than a new satellite could be produced and fielded,” said Charlotte Gerhart, low Earth orbit division chief at the production corps of USSF's Space and Missile Systems Center.

Brig. Gen. D. Jason Cothern, vice commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), said the U.S. Space Force will continue working with launch providers after selecting two contractors for a national security mission.

The Space Force previously awarded contracts to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance (ULA) to utilize the former’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy vehicles as well as the ULA Vulcan Centaur rocket for the second phase of the National Security Space Launch mission, SpaceNews reported Tuesday.

As part of Phase 2, ULA and SpaceX’s respective vehicles will launch satellites for national security missions from 2022 to 2027.

Cothern told attendees at a virtual RAND event that the Space Force is not planning to fund program competitors like Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman but will continue to work with them for vehicle certification efforts “at their expense.”

“We believe the current providers address the plans we have today for the near future,” he said. “We start with requirements and architectures, understanding the threats and determining what the requirements and architectures are to meet those threats.”

Cothern’s comments come after RAND released a report earlier this year stating that the U.S. needs at least three domestic providers of heavy-lift launch services through 2023 to ensure space dominance.