Autonomous space vehicle gets ride on Bandwagon-2 mission
NewsDecember 23, 2024
CENTENNIAL, Colo. Defense-technology company True Anomaly announced that it successfully deployed its Jackal autonomous orbital vehicle (AOV) spacecraft.
Nine months after its first flight test, the True Anomaly Jackal AOV was successfully deployed into orbit as part of SpaceX's Bandwagon-2 rideshare mission, sent into space early on Saturday, December 21 from Vandenberg Space Force Base (Santa Barbara County, California).
According to the company's announcement, Mission X-2 (MX-2) will spend several months conducting functional testing of Jackal in low Earth orbit (LEO) while using the company's Mosaic autonomy and mission command-and control software platform. Company officials describe the mission as "actively testing asymmetric defense technologies during a time of increasing competition between the U.S. and its adversaries."
