The Space Force is investing in additional capacity as the Pentagon prepares to launch more missile-warning, communications, navigation and intelligence satellites, while commercial operators place greater demands on the launch ranges at Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Satellite processing operations can require specialized clean rooms, high bays, hazardous-fueling areas, security systems and equipment for handling sensitive spacecraft. Limited access to such facilities can delay missions even when rockets and launch pads are available.<\/p>\n
All Points is the third company to receive a contract under the Commercial Solutions Opening, or CSO, initiative to expand satellite processing capacity. The award is more than three times the size of the previous two. It follows a $77.5 million contract issued to Astrotech Space Operations in April 2025 to expand processing capacity at Vandenberg, and a $78.25 million award to Blue Origin in October 2025 for additional capacity at Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n
Under the contract, All Points will design and construct a commercially owned and operated spacecraft processing center at Vandenberg’s Mission Development Zone, augmenting its existing operation at Space Launch Complex 2. The company’s Space Prep business holds a 65-acre, 50-year NASA land lease at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it is developing more than 540,000 square feet of processing and logistics space. The Vandenberg facility will include multiple high- and low-bay processing areas, dual encapsulation bays, blast-rated hazardous processing capability, secure mission areas, conditioned storage and advanced communications and monitoring systems.<\/p>\n
“As an independent provider unaffiliated with launch service providers or spacecraft manufacturers, we offer priority access to the Space Force and neutral access to others with consistent pricing,” said Kevin Brown, senior vice president of Space Prep.<\/p>\n
The Space Force framed the investment as an effort to scale infrastructure to keep pace with launch demand. “The current and future operating environments rely on a launch enterprise that can scale the infrastructure and processes necessary for responsive and reliable launch capabilities,” said Col. Dan Highlander, director of operations integration under the Space Force’s acquisition office for space access. The service has said inadequate spaceport infrastructure could constrain efforts to shorten launch campaigns and accommodate missions carrying multiple satellites. Vandenberg is the principal U.S. launch site for missions headed to polar and sun-synchronous orbits, making it important for military reconnaissance, weather and missile-tracking satellites as well as commercial constellations, with demand rising as SpaceX and other providers expand operations.<\/p>\n
The new capacity is slated to be available at Vandenberg by 2029. With two other companies already selected under the same program, the question is whether the expanded processing capacity translates into faster launch timelines for national security satellites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Space Force is investing in additional capacity as the Pentagon prepares to launch more missile-warning, communications, navigation and intelligence satellites, while commercial operators place greater demands on the launch ranges at Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Satellite processing operations can require specialized clean rooms, high bays, hazardous-fueling areas, security systems […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46392,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1935,332],"class_list":["post-46381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-cso","tag-space-force"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46381"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46381"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46393,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46381\/revisions\/46393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}