The first wave of Golden Dome spacecraft is about to start boot camp.
Today, Maryland spacecraft manufacturer Quantum Space announced its plans to launch its Ranger Prime vehicle to orbit in June. The spacecraft aims to demonstrate the company’s ability to meet the needs of future missions for the US Golden Dome architecture.
Duel-use: Quantum was founded with the aim of deploying a fleet of cislunar spacecraft to perform SDA, weather forecasting, PNT, comms, and edge computing services, but quickly transitioned to a dual-use focus when it realized cislunar capabilities translated well to the maneuverability needs in lower orbits.
Since President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome EO in January, Quantum has doubled down on its defense potential. The company hired Missile Defense Agency vet Richard Matlock, and spent $40M to acquire Phase Four’s propulsion tech—all in an effort to slice off as much of the Golden Dome pie as possible.
Now Quantum is ready to start demonstrating its progress. In June, Ranger Prime is expected to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base to test the spacecraft’s core avionics, chemical propulsion system, and remote proximity-targeting capabilities. The demo mission will lay the foundation for Quantum’s Ranger fleet that will use the same core technologies, but on larger platforms.
What’s next: In parallel to Ranger 500, Quantum is developing Ranger 2000, an upgraded spacecraft with larger solar arrays and a payload capacity of 2,000 kg.
Quantum expects to launch the first Ranger 2000 mission before the end of 2026, where it hopes to demonstrate capabilities that will one day be vital for the Golden Dome needs—whatever those may be. Down the line, Ranger 2000 will also come equipped with Phase Four’s electric propulsion tech, optimizing the spacecraft’s maneuverability for a range of missions.
“We’re really just offering up operational flexibility for the warfighter,” Quantum COO Sue Hall told Payload. “What we’ve done on Ranger to date is directly applicable to many of the other applications that they’d like to have for Golden Dome.”
Hall said that Quantum has the production capacity to produce tens of Ranger 2000 spacecraft per year, but that the company is actively looking at increasing its production capacity beyond that to satisfy the Space Force’s growing thirst for maneuverable spacecraft.
