Space Industry Cheat Sheet: AI Wargames, Golden Dome Ambitions, and a Crowded Cosmos

The space indus­try con­tin­ues its relent­less accel­er­a­tion, and this week brought devel­op­ments that under­score just how rapid­ly the sec­tor is evolving—from AI-pow­ered orbital war­fare sim­u­la­tions to the grow­ing scram­ble among com­pa­nies posi­tion­ing them­selves for Amer­i­ca’s next-gen­er­a­tion mis­sile defense architecture.

Space Force Taps Slingshot to Train Guardians with AI Adversaries

In one of the week’s most sig­nif­i­cant defense con­tracts, Sling­shot Aero­space secured a $27 mil­lion deal to mod­ern­ize how Space Force Guardians train for orbital con­flict. The cen­ter­piece of the con­tract is TALOS, Sling­shot’s arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence sys­tem designed to sim­u­late adver­sary behav­ior dur­ing space wargames.

What makes TALOS dif­fer­ent from tra­di­tion­al train­ing tools is its adap­tive nature. Rather than fol­low­ing rigid, pre-pro­grammed scripts, the AI draws on Sling­shot’s mas­sive library of real-world orbital obser­va­tions to respond dynam­i­cal­ly to trainee actions. Accord­ing to Sling­shot CEO Tim Solms, the sys­tem tracks rough­ly 95% of all pay­load-sized objects across orbital regimes, cre­at­ing what the com­pa­ny calls the largest cor­pus of com­mer­cial­ly avail­able astro­met­ric and pho­to­met­ric data today.

The 18-month con­tract, award­ed through a Space Force Com­mer­cial Solu­tions Open­ing, builds on a pre­vi­ous $25 mil­lion Strate­gic Fund­ing Increase award that allowed Space Train­ing and Readi­ness Com­mand to eval­u­ate TALOS capa­bil­i­ties. The sys­tem will inte­grate with the Space Force Oper­a­tional Test and Train­ing Infra­struc­ture, bring­ing togeth­er red team, blue team, and white cell tools into a uni­fied clas­si­fied train­ing environment.

Golden Dome Draws Commercial Interest

The U.S. gov­ern­men­t’s Gold­en Dome mis­sile defense pro­gram con­tin­ues to reshape com­pet­i­tive dynam­ics across the space indus­tri­al base. Fire­fly Aero­space’s recent $855 mil­lion acqui­si­tion of defense con­trac­tor SciTec was explic­it­ly framed as a play for Gold­en Dome oppor­tu­ni­ties. SciTec spe­cial­izes in remote sens­ing, mis­sile defense, space domain aware­ness, and autonomous com­mand and control—capabilities increas­ing­ly cen­tral to the pro­gram’s architecture.

The Gold­en Dome ini­tia­tive is also dri­ving momen­tum in the space domain aware­ness mar­ket. Accord­ing to indus­try ana­lysts, the pro­gram, along­side the Traf­fic Coor­di­na­tion Sys­tem for Space (TraC­SS), is adding sig­nif­i­cant momen­tum to efforts to keep bet­ter tabs on what’s hap­pen­ing in orbit—a neces­si­ty as the num­ber of active satel­lites in low Earth orbit has surged from under a thou­sand in 2019 to more than 10,000 today.

The Space Tracking Boom Intensifies

Speak­ing of crowd­ed skies, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of space domain aware­ness plat­forms emerged as a major theme this week. As mega­con­stel­la­tions mul­ti­ply, so do the com­pa­nies track­ing them—but indus­try lead­ers are increas­ing­ly ques­tion­ing whether all these com­pet­ing cat­a­logs are tru­ly necessary.

Leo­Labs con­tin­ues to oper­ate one of the most com­pre­hen­sive radar net­works, capa­ble of track­ing objects as small as 10 cen­time­ters in LEO with 99.3% cov­er­age of the U.S. pub­lic cat­a­log. Mean­while, com­pa­nies like Kay­han Space are tak­ing a dif­fer­ent approach, delib­er­ate­ly avoid­ing sen­sor own­er­ship to focus on data fusion across mul­ti­ple sources.

The real chal­lenge, accord­ing to Joe Chan of the Space Data Asso­ci­a­tion, is that oper­a­tors now face infor­ma­tion over­load. They’re receiv­ing alerts from mul­ti­ple sources with no clear frame­work for pri­or­i­tiz­ing action. The emerg­ing con­sen­sus points toward some­thing resem­bling air traf­fic con­trol for space—built on shared data stan­dards and inter­op­er­a­ble sys­tems rather than yet anoth­er pro­pri­etary map.

Crew-11 Returns Early Amid Medical Concerns

NASA and SpaceX con­duct­ed what the agency termed a med­ical evac­u­a­tion this week, bring­ing the Crew-11 astro­nauts home six days ahead of sched­ule. The four crew members—including NASA astro­nauts Zena Card­man and Mike Fincke—splashed down safe­ly in the Pacif­ic Ocean off the Cal­i­for­nia coast after undock­ing from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Station.

NASA has not dis­closed spe­cif­ic details about the med­ical issue that prompt­ed the ear­ly return, but the rapid response demon­strat­ed the oper­a­tional flex­i­bil­i­ty of the com­mer­cial crew pro­gram. The mis­sion ulti­mate­ly last­ed more than five months, with the crew con­duct­ing exten­sive sci­ence oper­a­tions aboard the ISS.

NRO Kicks Off Prolific Launch Year

The Nation­al Recon­nais­sance Office launched its first mis­sion of what’s expect­ed to be a busy 2026, with the NROL-105 mis­sion lift­ing off from Van­den­berg Space Force Base aboard a SpaceX Fal­con 9. The mis­sion sup­ports the NRO’s pro­lif­er­at­ed archi­tec­ture satel­lite constellation—part of a broad­er shift toward small­er, more numer­ous recon­nais­sance assets rather than rely­ing sole­ly on large exquis­ite systems.

Approx­i­mate­ly a dozen NRO mis­sions are planned for 2026, reflect­ing the agen­cy’s accel­er­at­ed deploy­ment tem­po. As NRO Prin­ci­pal Deputy Direc­tor Troy Meink has stat­ed, the pro­lif­er­a­tion and diver­si­fi­ca­tion of the archi­tec­ture will pro­vide increased cov­er­age, greater capac­i­ty, resilience, and more time­ly deliv­ery of data.

Investment Momentum Continues

Glob­al invest­ments in core space infra­struc­ture hit a five-quar­ter high in Q3 2025, reach­ing $4.4 bil­lion accord­ing to Space Cap­i­tal’s analy­sis. Seraphim Space’s par­al­lel assess­ment tal­lied glob­al quar­ter­ly invest­ments at $3.5 billion—either way, a strong sig­nal of con­tin­ued investor con­fi­dence in the sector.

Stoke Space exem­pli­fied this momen­tum, rais­ing $510 mil­lion in a Series D round to fund oper­a­tions through its first launch­es. The fund­ing, led by the U.S. Inno­v­a­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Fund and includ­ing a $100 mil­lion debt facil­i­ty from Sil­i­con Val­ley Bank, brings the com­pa­ny’s total cap­i­tal raised to $990 mil­lion. Stoke is devel­op­ing Nova, a medi­um-lift vehi­cle with both stages designed for reusability—a tech­ni­cal ambi­tion that, if achieved, could fur­ther trans­form launch economics.

Mean­while, the Space Force estab­lished a new $1 bil­lion work­ing cap­i­tal fund, the Enter­prise Space Activ­i­ty Group, designed to help mil­i­tary users pur­chase com­mer­cial space ser­vices more effi­cient­ly. The fund began oper­a­tions with an ini­tial $120 mil­lion deposit and is expect­ed to han­dle more than $1.2 bil­lion in annu­al transactions.

Looking Ahead

As Artemis II prepa­ra­tions continue—with NASA tar­get­ing the crewed lunar fly­by mis­sion that will send astro­nauts far­ther from Earth than any humans have trav­eled before—the broad­er space ecosys­tem is clear­ly prepar­ing for a new era of activ­i­ty. From AI-pow­ered train­ing sys­tems to pro­lif­er­at­ed satel­lite archi­tec­tures to com­mer­cial sta­tions rac­ing to replace the ISS, the pieces are mov­ing into position.

The com­pe­ti­tion for Gold­en Dome con­tracts, the race to dom­i­nate space domain aware­ness, and the relent­less push toward launch reusabil­i­ty all point to an indus­try that isn’t just growing—it’s fun­da­men­tal­ly trans­form­ing. The ques­tion isn’t whether space will mat­ter more in the years ahead. It’s who will be posi­tioned to lead when it does.

Pax ab Space

Clin­ton Austin is a Senior Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Direc­tor for GDIT who cov­ers the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Space Force, and the Mis­sile Defense Agency.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the offi­cial pol­i­cy or posi­tion of Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Infor­ma­tion Technology.

January 26, 2026

Posted in Space.