WASHINGTON — The Department of the Air Force and the U.S. Space Force are preparing to procure up to five cislunar satellites to establish an operational defense presence between Earth and the Moon by late 2029, according to an industry notice.
The formal Request for Information (RFI) marks the military’s initial procurement step toward treating the deep-space volume beyond geostationary orbit as an active warfighting domain.
Strategic Surveillance Beyond Geosynchronous Orbit
The solicitation addresses strategic concerns over cislunar space, an operational volume 1,728 times larger than traditional geostationary orbit (GEO). With foreign adversaries expanding lunar exploration, defense planners are acting to monitor deep-space trajectories and counter potential threats. The initiative builds on prior strategy, including when the Space Force formalized its cislunar strategy amid acquisition restructuring to counter threats beyond GEO, aligning with the vision set when General Saltzman unveiled the 2040 blueprint to scale the Space Force for great power competition.
Procurement Heritage and Seed Vehicle Strategy
The planned satellites will serve as seed vehicles to evaluate operational survivability before the military commits to a broader proliferated constellation. To avoid traditional four- to five-year development cycles, the service is prioritizing commercially available spacecraft buses capable of rapid flight integration. This approach builds upon deep-space technologies matured under the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Oracle cislunar space situational awareness program, transitioning experimental concepts into operational hardware.
Payload Architecture and Autonomous Flight Specifications
Under the Cislunar Space System (CSS) notice, contractor platforms must host government payloads supporting space domain awareness (SDA), data relays, and independent positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT). Spacecraft buses must possess flight heritage within the past three years or complete qualification within 24 months, incorporating autonomous software capable of station-keeping and fault recovery for at least 72 hours without ground contact.
Study Contracts and 2029 Launch Roadmap
Responses to the RFI are due Nov. 24, 2026. The Department of the Air Force intends to award up to five firm-fixed-price preliminary design study contracts in early 2027, maintaining an acquisition schedule targeting initial launch capability by late 2029 and full on-orbit operations by 2031.
