A new Congressional Budget Office report says the creation of a Space National Guard with approximately 1,500 personnel to support the U.S. Space Force would result in approximately $100 million in additional operations and support costs per year.

CBO said the Department of Defense would also incur about $20 million in onetime costs to build additional facilities for such a force. Senior leaders of the National Guard Bureau proposed in February the establishment of a smaller Space National Guard through the combination of Air and Army National Guard units with space-related missions.

CBO also presented in the report its estimates for a Space National Guard with approximately 4,900 to 5,800 personnel. The agency said the formation of such a force would require DoD to spend an additional of $385 million to $490 million annually on operations and support services.

A larger Space National Guard would also result in onetime construction costs of between $400 million and $900 million.

Maj. Gen. John Shaw, head of Space Operations Command within the U.S. Space Force, discussed at a webinar Monday about planetary defense and how the Pentagon’s partnership with NASA might help mitigate the threat of an asteroid found to be on a collision course with Earth, DoD News reported Tuesday.

"We're happy to team with NASA in that regard," Shaw said. "If a small asteroid or meteorite did hit the Earth, there would be some sort of emergency management response on the part of our nation to support wherever that landed, and the Department of Defense would be happy to be a teammate in that regard."

He said NASA has an office tasked with cataloging solar system elements that could pose a threat to the Earth.

Shaw also discussed the launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft as part of NASA’s crewed Demo-2 flight test mission to the International Space Station and the readiness of DoD recovery personnel to retrieve astronauts in the event of a failed mission.

The AFNet Sustainment and Operations branch collaborated with the Defense Information Systems Agency to expand the network capacity of the U.S. Air Force.

The team transported and installed various equipment from Hanscom Air Force Base to Beale, Peterson and Vandenberg Air Force Bases in California, while a group of engineers remotely configured and brought the services online, USAF said Monday.

Lt. Col. Charles O’Connor, materiel leader and branch chief at HNIB, said the effort allowed the network to increase its user capacity from 10K to 200K users.

“We had to coordinate across multiple organizations to expedite the required changes needed in days versus weeks or months,” added O'Connor.

The U.S. Navy has created a new management system to comply with safety requirements at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility.

PSNS & IMF's new safety management system includes job hazard analyses, health policy, technical instruction and other efforts, Naval Sea Systems Command said Friday.

“This system provides a foundation for the safety culture that is expected and demanded in our complex work environment,” said Cody Matheson, deputy director for environment, safety and health at PSNS & IMF.

A signing event took place Friday to formalize the system's establishment with the attendance of Safety Executive Steering Committee members and PSNS & IMF officers.

PSNS & IMF's Environment, Safety and Health Office will implement and oversee the new safety system.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has fielded six small satellites in efforts to optimize the accuracy of weather forecasts and space weather monitoring.

The  Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate smallsats gather "bent" signals from global positioning navigation systems through the use of radio occultation to secure information such as atmospheric pressure and temperature, NOAA said Monday.

The smallsats also work to collect data on the low-altitude ionosphere. Louis Uccellini, director at NOAA's National Weather Service, said the agency seeks to employ moisture measurements and wind vector data to identify the conditions that enhance or weaken hurricanes.

The COSMIC-2 program is a joint effort with the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, the Taiwan National Space Organization and the American Institute in Taiwan.

Dovarius Peoples, chief information officer of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), said the Army component is leveraging data repositories to enable the use of artificial intelligence for geospatial-related applications, Federal News Network reported Monday.

Peoples told the publication in an interview that USACE’s missions encompass military, civil and disaster response missions that rely on communications and geospatial intelligence platforms.

“We conduct a lot of inventory and consume. We conduct a lot of inventory and use information consumed by each individual program element,” he said. “And we also use our repositories as well. That’s how we identify a lot of our authoritative data sources — through repositories for the various types of information.”

Peoples noted that USACE also intends to invest in training personnel to refine their handling of emerging technologies and procedures.

“Because if not, then that means the data strategy we’re trying to put in place will be flattened,” he added.

The U.S. Navy has begun to set the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier for communication system tests that would occur for more than a year in the Atlantic region, Defense One reported Monday.

The ship's voice and data link systems will undergo sea trials to demonstrate the ability to perform command and control with other ships.

“We’d love to get Ford to start doing some basic interaction with the rest of a strike group type of organization,” Rear Adm. Craig Clapperton, Carrier Strike Group 12 commander, told reporters Monday.

These C2 systems facilitate battle information sharing across naval ships and aircraft. USS Gerald Ford will establish connectivity with USS Harry S. Truman, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, and other ships in the tests.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will push through with the plan to convert the C-band spectrum into a medium for the implementation of 5G connectivity.

The agency said Monday that its Wireless Telecommunications Bureau has already made agreements with satellite operators on the 5G implementation’s schedule. FCC wants to have 5G occupy a large percentage of the C-band spectrum portion.

“The acceptance of accelerated relocation by all eligible satellite operators vindicates the FCC’s approach for making C-band spectrum available for 5G more quickly,” said Ajit Pai, FCC chairman.

The commission’s planned 5G implementation requires operators to shift megahertz settings in the C-band space to accommodate ground-based or terrestrial connectivity. The 5G operators so far are Intelsat, Telesat, Eutelsat, SES and Star One.

FCC plans to commence an auction for the C-band spectrum in December. Spectrum adjustments will occur over two phases through December 2023.