A massive asteroid is on course to slam into Earth and cause a natural disaster of epic proportions.
Who are you going to call?
The Space Force? Or NASA?
It turns out that the planetary defense mission falls to NASA, which would deploy a spacecraft to attempt to knock the threatening space rock off course or, as a last resort, blow it up with a nuclear weapon.
On the other hand, if China or Russia were threatening to knock out one of America’s vital communications or navigation satellites, the U.S. Space Force would be the on-call responder.
If you watch the Netflix comedy spoof Space Force, you might think the nation’s newest branch of the armed forces will soon be sporting lunar gray crater-patterned camouflage and engaging in mock infantry battles on the moon.
“When do we expect to have boots on the moon? No idea. Certainly not in my career,” Space Force’s Lt. Gen. David Thompson, who spoke at a Defense One event this month, said.
America’s newest and smallest service, the motto of which is “Semper supra” (“always above”), has a much more down-to-earth mission. Its 16,000 members operate largely from terra firma with the job of protecting America’s orbiting assets while coming up with new ways to outmaneuver and defeat adversaries who threaten them.
Putting satellites in space? That’s a Space Force mission.
“We operate capabilities like GPS satellites, like communications satellites, weather satellites, missile warning satellites to detect any missiles that might threaten the United States,” Gen. John Raymond, chief of space operations, said.
“As the nation’s newest branch of the armed services, we are all about our national security space enterprise, making sure that our nation and our joint coalition war fighters have the space capabilities that they need to provide advantage to our nation,” he said at an Air Force Association forum last month.
Putting people in space? That’s a NASA mission.
No one who joins the Space Force will be going into space anytime soon, unless they are picked from the 12,000 hopefuls who applied this year to join NASA’s astronaut corps, according to Thompson.
“The best and most direct route for any member of the United States Space Force to go personally and physically into space today … remains what it has been for decades,” he said.
It can be confusing, which is why one of the first things NASA and the nascent Space Force did was update a memorandum of understanding to make clear which organization does what and how they will work together when their missions overlap.
“NASA’s job is science, discovery, exploration,” Jim Bridenstine, a former Oklahoma congressman who is now NASA administrator, said. “We don’t do defense. We don’t fight and win wars.”
But NASA does play an important role in national security, argued Bridenstine, as “a tool of diplomacy” building coalitions for peaceful projects, such as the International Space Station, which is operated by 15 nations and has hosted astronauts from 19 different countries.
NASA has its sights on a return trip to the moon and then on to Mars, all using U.S.-made commercial spacecraft, like the recent SpaceX mission that carried two astronauts to the space station.
The space agency’s Artemis program aims to land the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024, Artemis in Greek mythology being the twin sister of Apollo, the name of the program that put the first man on the moon in 1969.
Meanwhile, the Space Force has its gaze firmly fixed on Beijing and Moscow.
“China and Russia are aggressively developing counterspace capabilities specifically designed to hold U.S. and allied space capabilities at risk,” Justin Johnson, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy, said at a Heritage Foundation event this month.
“This spring, Russia conducted a test of a mobile ASAT system capable of destroying satellites in low-Earth orbit,” he said, while China’s People’s Liberation Army, which first tested an anti-satellite weapon in 2007, has continued to weaponize space by developing electronic warfare and directed energy capabilities.
“The PLA has fielded an operational ground-based ASAT system intended to target low-Earth orbit satellites and probably intends to pursue additional ASAT weapons capable of destroying satellites up to geosynchronous orbit,” Johnson said.
America’s $20 trillion U.S. economy runs on space.
Satellites power the internet, global communications, financial markets, and the power grid, pretty much every aspect of modern life. Space is also fundamental to America’s war fighting systems, including precision-guided munitions, secure communications, unmanned aircraft, and missile defenses.
Like the other service chiefs, Raymond is in charge of training and equipping the Space Force.
The job of securing the vast expanse of space that extends more than 60 miles above the Earth’s surface falls to the combatant commander, Army Gen. Jim Dickinson, the newly designated commander of U.S. Space Command.
There are few rules governing space, except for provisions of the Outer Space Treaty, signed by the U.S. and the Soviet Union in 1967 and ratified by 110 countries.
“It says you won’t put a nuclear weapon in space and you won’t use the moon for military operations,” Raymond said. “Short of that, it’s the wild, wild West.”
NASA doesn’t plan to use the moon only as a jumping-off point for Mars. It has ambitious plans to begin mining the lunar surface for rare earth metals, which usually come from asteroids that have struck the Earth over billions of years.
“If we have rare earth metals, you know those same asteroid impacts have impacted the moon,” Bridenstine said. “The difference is on the moon, there is no active geology. There is no active hydrosphere. There is no active atmosphere. So, anything that impacted the moon billions of years ago is today right where it was billions of years ago.”
No one knows for sure, but NASA scientists theorize there could be tens of trillions of dollars in large deposits of platinum-group metals on the moon.
“If somebody were to be able to capitalize on those discoveries,” Bridenstine said, “it could change the balance of power on Earth.”
And, he argued, the potential riches should go to the nation that gets there first.
“The fundamental law that applies is if you apply your sweat and your equity and your investment, your capital to extracting a resource, you receive the benefit of owning the property right of that resource,” Bridenstine said. Just like fishing rights on Earth. “While you don’t also own the ocean, that’s the fundamental property right [that] exists, whether it’s fish or energy from the ocean.”
In creating the Space Force, the Trump administration identified space as not just a place for commerce and exploration but also a distinct war fighting domain.
The 2019 National Security Strategy states the overarching principle in blunt terms: “Any harmful interference with, or an attack on, critical components of our space architecture will be met with a deliberate response at a time, place, manner, and domain of our choosing.”
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
