Space Force Launches $30M Cislunar Push for Deep-Space Dominance
The Air Force Research Laboratory and SpaceWERX will award $30 million across 15 contracts starting next spring to accelerate commercial cislunar technologies. The initiative targets rapid deployment of space domain awareness, communications, and navigation capabilities beyond GEO by 2029.
The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and its SpaceWERX innovation hub are launching "Cislunar Prime," a $30 million technology initiative designed to rapidly transition commercial space capabilities beyond geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO). The program is scheduled for formal announcement in December, with proposal solicitations opening in January and contract awards launching next spring. SpaceWERX plans to issue 15 Direct-to-Phase-Two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts valued at $2 million each, targeting three core mission areas: space domain awareness (SDA), deep-space communications, and positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT).
The strategic push reflects a decisive pivot in U.S. defense posture, formally recognizing the cislunar theater—stretching past GEO to the Moon and comprising 1,728 times the volume of traditional GEO space—as a contested warfighting domain. Operating at these extreme distances presents severe physical and technical hurdles, including unstable gravitational trajectories, persistent tracking gaps, and degraded Earth-bound communications. Driven in large part by China’s aggressive plans to establish permanent infrastructure beyond GEO and on the lunar surface, the Department of Defense is shifting from passive observation to operational readiness, seeking deployed capabilities as early as 2029.
Crucially, defense officials emphasize that Cislunar Prime is not a multi-year academic exercise, but a targeted acquisition effort for mature, off-the-shelf technologies. The Space Force and its newly established Cislunar Coordination Office are preparing complementary requests for information focused on existing hardware, operational software, and autonomous artificial intelligence processing that can be flight-tested within two to three years. Combined with pathfinder projects such as AFRL's Oracle satellite—slated to launch this December to test efficient cislunar mobility and navigation—the service is building an integrated tech stack for deep-space operations.
For defense leaders, commercial space firms, and technology vendors, this push creates immediate opportunities to shape the architecture of deep-space domain awareness and logistics. Commercial vendors capable of providing high-autonomy software, resilient sensor suites, and specialized ground integration will find a receptive, fast-moving customer in the Space Force. As security dynamics expand beyond traditional orbits, establishing a dominant operational footprint in cislunar space will be critical to protecting civil, commercial, and national security assets across the broader Earth-Moon system. (Source: Air & Space Forces Magazine)
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