Bussey: Space Force Interest in Orbit Grew from Commercial and Academic-Led Innovation and Demos
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Very low Earth orbit (vLEO) is emerging as a serious option in future space architectures for national security and commercial missions, panelists said at the Racing to vLEO: Next-Generation Operations in Very Low Earth Orbit session at ASCEND 2026 on Wednesday. “It’s the perfect time for vLEO to be coming into its own,” said Spence Wise, senior vice president at Redwire, citing a convergence of technical readiness, operational demand, and commercial interest.
Panelist Steven Shepard, co‑founder and CEO of Vaxon Space, cast vLEO as “the new frontier,” with dual‑use potential for missile defense and broadband connectivity. A former Lockheed Martin program manager, Shepard established Vaxon Space last year to pursue both defense and commercial markets.
Flying closer to Earth offers clear advantages: sharper imagery, stronger signals, more precise positioning, reduced latency, more efficient spectrum use, and a “self‑cleaning” orbit where debris naturally deorbits due to atmospheric drag. Typical vLEO altitudes of 180–250 kilometers also support greater use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components.
But those benefits come with real trade-offs. vLEO, starting around the Kármán line, demands regular propulsion or re-boost to hold altitude. The upper atmosphere is also rich in atomic oxygen – a short-lived, highly reactive form of oxygen that attacks most materials, drives aerodynamic drag, and accelerates orbital decay, forcing designers to think differently about propulsion, materials, and mission lifetimes.
Space Force: Searching for the vLEO “Killer App”
“We’ve seen from the commercial sector some advances and exciting efforts,” noted Gillian Bussey, deputy chief science officer for the U.S. Space Force, who was inducted as an AIAA Fellow on Monday. “We’re starting to look at where vLEO makes sense for our architecture … what’s that killer app?”
She added that the service did not start with a formal requirement for vLEO. Instead, interest has grown as commercial and academic demonstrations have advanced, including DARPA’s Otter program.
Bussey highlighted several priority areas: lower‑power, direct‑to‑device communications, enabling COTS equipment at both ends of the link – a key benefit for size-, weight-, and power‑constrained warfighters; resilient, survivable architectures, particularly if higher LEO assets are degraded; and rapid reconstitution using proliferated, short‑lived satellites that can be prepositioned or quickly launched for 30–90‑day missions during a conflict.
The Space Force is currently examining where vLEO fits in future force design and what that implies for technology investments, Bussey said.
Industry Makes the Case
On the defense side, Shepard from Vaxon Space sees vLEO as ideal for missile defense and space‑based interceptors, where closer-in vantage points can improve brightness sensitivity and reduce engagement timelines. Commercially, the company sees a role for vLEO as a relay layer for in‑orbit data centers and broadband constellations seeking more efficient paths down to the ground.
“The amount of information going into orbit is exponential,” Shepard said, asserting that vLEO could become an important connectivity layer as Starship-scale launch capacity drives more infrastructure off‑planet.
Redwire is already an established defense supplier of vLEO technology. As the prime contractor for DARPA’s Otter mission, Redwire was awarded a $44 million, phase-two contract to demonstrate the world’s first air-breathing spacecraft. By harvesting ambient, low-density air to use as fuel, the program aims to overcome atmospheric drag and avoid carrying heavy fuel reserves. “vLEO is the new high ground as space is officially a warfighting domain,” Wise said.
Dual Use: Defense and Commercial Together
Bussey pointed to current government experiments that touch vLEO — DARPA’s Otter Program, demonstrating long‑duration operations near the top of the atmosphere, and the recently launched DiskSat experiment, using flat, disk‑shaped spacecraft.
Panel moderator Brian Cameron, deputy chief technology officer for The Aerospace Corporation, said his organization recently launched four DiskSat‑style satellites with Rocket Lab and plans vLEO dip campaigns this summer to inform future communications and phased‑array concepts.
vLEO satellites experience significant drag and may maneuver frequently, making their trajectories less predictable than those of higher‑orbit spacecraft. That complicates traditional conjunction analysis or space domain awareness methods based on stable two‑line elements.
“Because they’re subjected to atmospheric drag – or they have propulsion, so they’re changing – it’s not predictable exactly where that satellite is going to be at any moment,” she said.
That could complicate space situational awareness, and the need for interfaces with human spaceflight and suborbital operations.
Wise pointed to SpaceX’s Starlink operations as an example of how industry has already navigated traffic management and human spaceflight interfaces in a crowded LEO environment. He argued that the commercial space sector “is more than capable of addressing these issues and putting safety first” as vLEO deployment scales.
Engineering and Supply Chain: Leveraging COTS and GPUs
Panelists also addressed the technical and industrial realities that distinguish vLEO: atmospheric drag rises sharply at lower altitudes, driving continuous propulsion needs; atomic oxygen erodes many standard materials, forcing new coatings and structures for longer‑duration missions; and solar arrays increase both power and drag, creating design loops that must be closed carefully.
Shepard said Vaxon Space is investing in high‑efficiency inlets and air‑breathing engines and prioritizing engine thrust‑to‑power ratio to keep solar array size – and drag – down. The company is working with multiple engine providers and has proposed a NASA‑backed inlet mission to about 80 kilometers.
On the supply chain side, panelists agreed vLEO may be well positioned to exploit rapid advances in commercial computing. Operating lower reduces radiation exposure and allows greater reliance on COTS processors and GPUs, including platforms refreshed every few years.
Shepard noted that GPUs are improving and dropping in cost on a short cadence, enabling more on‑orbit processing and AI, while cutting downlink needs.
Bussey sees the potential of leveraging vLEO using short‑lived satellites rather than long‑life ones that require custom electronics. Traditional electronics bottlenecks in defense space programs ease when mission durations and environments allow COTS parts. However, she cautioned that advanced materials and specialized propulsion for very low, long‑duration missions are still early in their industrialization.
Wise added that the core physics – materials behavior, drag, space weather – are well characterized, and that vLEO has become primarily a systems engineering and economics maximization effort. Redwire uses digital engineering and multi‑physics modeling to optimize constellations against those constraints.
Outlook Bright
Panelists agreed that vLEO is unlikely to be heavily congested in the near term, since objects in vLEO naturally deorbit due to atmospheric drag. Still, they expect strong growth in interest if higher LEO becomes more contested or if early vLEO demonstrations prove technically and economically viable.
Wise said Redwire is already seeing demand signals in the hundreds of satellites on one‑ to two‑year horizons. Bussey added that among the orbital regimes covered in recent national guidance – including cislunar space – industry outreach to her office has been strongest around vLEO.
Taken together, Otter, DiskSat, emerging dual‑use business models, and increased use of COTS computing suggest that vLEO is moving quickly into serious consideration as a new operational layer in space architectures.
