offbeat

Less than 17 hours after receiving orders, Rocket Lab put Pioneer in orbit for close-range maneuvers with True Anomaly's Jackal satellite

Rocket Lab has just completed one of the most rapid space launches ever, kicking off a complicated exercise that will test the US Space Force’s ability to respond to and characterize potential threats in orbit.

The Victus Haze mission, as the project is known, saw Rocket Lab lob one of its Pioneer spacecraft into orbit for the Space Force on June 19 in just 16 hours and 42 minutes, beating the notice-to-launch record set during the 2023 Victus Nox tactically responsive space mission (TacRS) by more than 10 hours. 

In addition to the rapid launch, Rocket Lab also managed to fully ready its Pioneer spacecraft being used for the exercise in just 37 hours and 36 minutes, well in advance of Victus Haze’s 72-hour commissioning deadline. With Pioneer now in orbit, the next phase of Victus Haze is set to begin.

“The mission will now transition into an on-orbit focus placing operationally relevant systems through realistic rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) threat response scenarios,” the US Space Force said in its own announcement of the Rocket Lab launch.

Pioneer won’t be flying RPO maneuvers on its own, though. Rocket Lab may be playing the part of the Space Force’s rapid launch partner for Victus Haze, but space defense company True Anomaly already has one of its Jackal satellites in orbit. 

Jackal, which was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in May, will be playing the role of a “non-compliant satellite” that Pioneer will have to rendezvous with and characterize, demonstrating the ability for both craft to maneuver around each other, take photographs for analysts to pick apart, and track each other as if they were hostile targets the USSF wanted to monitor. 

As noted by True Anomaly, Victus Haze marks a departure from Victus Nox, which only involved a single spacecraft and focused on uncontested orbital operations. 

“VICTUS HAZE encompasses the full scope of TacRS operations: rapid launch and initialization, followed by operationally relevant 1-on-1 RPO between Rocket Lab and True Anomaly spacecraft in low Earth orbit,” True Anomaly said in its own announcement of the Victus Haze mission. 

Those one-on-one maneuvers the two satellites will undertake will help develop tactics, techniques, and procedures for future space operations, True Anomaly explained, as well as determining what sort of equipment the Space Force might want to consider for its TacRS spacecraft. 

The mission marks the second of the USSF’s planned annual tactical space missions, a pace that has already slipped after no TacRS launch took place in 2025. Victus Nox, the first full-fledged TacRS mission involving an actual space launch, launched in 2023 and concluded in 2024.

Victus Haze’s notice-to-launch record comes a week after DARPA announced it was seeking concepts for rapid-launch space missions able to quickly replace space assets destroyed in an orbital conflict, again suggesting that star wars - or at least orbital ones - are rapidly looking inevitable. ®