{"id":47170,"date":"2026-04-13T21:42:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T13:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/lockheed-martin-planning-next-generation-space-dominance-demos-on-orbit\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T21:42:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T13:42:30","slug":"lockheed-martin-planning-next-generation-space-dominance-demos-on-orbit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/lockheed-martin-planning-next-generation-space-dominance-demos-on-orbit\/","title":{"rendered":"Lockheed Martin Planning Next-Generation Space Dominance Demos On Orbit"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. <\/em>\u2014 To meet the Defense Department\u2019s appetite for orbital warfare capabilities, Lockheed Martin<\/strong> is self-funding two next-generation space dominance efforts for rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) and command and control, a company official said on Monday.<\/p>\n

The Space Force wants to be able to move faster and wants \u201ckit in orbit now,\u201d Tim Lynch, vice president for Mission Strategy at Lockheed Martin\u2019s Space segment, said during a media briefing alongside Space Symposium.<\/p>\n

The upcoming demonstrations will be of a smaller satellite platform, called Vanguard, and a medium-class system, Sentinel, that will leverage the spacecraft products of the company\u2019s Terran Orbital subsidiary, Lynch said.<\/p>\n

Lockheed Martin is targeting the demonstrations for late 2028 and early 2029 to prove certain concepts, Lynch said. The plan is to launch an \u201casset into Geosynchronous orbit\u201d to do some RPO maneuvers, and command, control and mission management, he said.<\/p>\n

The company has a \u201ctentative roadmap\u201d for its next-generation space dominance demonstrations, with the Vanguard flight slated in the first year of the plan followed by the Sentinel demonstration the next year, a company spokesperson said, adding that timing is subject to customer needs, launch availability and \u201cour broader platform validation schedules.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lynch said the \u201cmain goal\u201d of the space dominance effort \u201cis to build common subsystems so that they\u2019re plug-and-play, so that we have frameworks that are [able] to adapt to our customers\u2019 needs. Some of the subsystems include attitude control subsystems, power subsystems, propulsion, rendezvous, proximity and operations, RPO.\u201d<\/p>\n

Between Terran Orbital\u2019s and Lockheed Martin\u2019s legacy research and development know-how, \u201cwe can build a very good subset, or a very good capability space, for our customers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For the Vanguard and Sentinel efforts, the company has \u201cearly adopters\u201d that are giving input and describing \u201cwhat they\u2019re willing to buy and establishing a demand signal,\u201d Lynch said.<\/p>\n

Lockheed Martin was one of 14 \u201cAndromeda\u201d awardees last week for a $1.8 billion Space Force space domain awareness program called Geosynchronous Reconnaissance & Surveillance Constellation, or RG-XX. With the eventual RG-XX satellites the service plans to conduct RPO missions.<\/p>\n

Lynch\u2019s presentation included a slide describing Vanguard as \u201ccompact, high-throughput, ideal for constellations, and Sentinel as \u201clarger power and propulsion, optional on-orbit refueling for enduring missions.\u201d The two systems will share about 70 percent of the module subsystems such as guidance, navigation, control and star trackers, he said.<\/p>\n

The smaller and lower-cost Vanguard will be less exquisite and not as advanced in RPO missions as Sentinel, which will have more Delta V and maneuverability, Lynch said. The higher the Delta V, or \u201cchange in velocity,\u201d the more complex maneuvers a spacecraft is able to perform and the farther it can travel.<\/p>\n

Sentinel is Lockheed Martin\u2019s baseline spacecraft for RG-XX, which has \u201csome large Delta V requirements,\u201d Lynch said.<\/p>\n

Space situational awareness, and protect and defend are \u201ctwo of the major threats we\u2019re seeing right now,\u201d Lynch said.<\/p>\n

This story was first published by Defense Daily<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. \u2014 To meet the Defense Department\u2019s appetite for orbital warfare capabilities, Lockheed Martin is self-funding two next-generation space dominance efforts for rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) and command and control, a company official said on Monday. The Space Force wants to be able to move faster and wants \u201ckit in orbit now,\u201d Tim […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47170"}],"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=47170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}