In the more than five years since the establishment of the United States Space Force, no designs have been considered for approval to include the force in an ongoing United States Mint series honoring all branches of the U.S. military.

The U.S. Mint at one point anticipated striking and offering for public sale in 2023 a Matte Finish bronze medal and Matte Finish 1-ounce and 2.5-ounce .999 fine silver medals honoring the force.

The three numismatic products were issued for each of the other branches of the United States military — beginning with the Air Force 2.5-ounce silver medal released in July 2021, followed at intervals over the next few years by medals for the Coast Guard, Navy, Marines and U.S. Army. Releases of duplicate 1-ounce silver medals and bronze medals intermittently followed for each branch.

The 1-ounce silver medals and bronze duplicate medals remain available for each of the five already recognized branches.

A medal in the series honoring the Space Force was predicted by a Mint spokesman in 2022 with an anticipated goal of a 2023 release, but further steps in design and review have not occurred and no Space Force medal for the series yet exists.

The U.S. Space Force was established Dec. 20, 2019, when the National Defense Authorization Act was signed into law by President Donald Trump during his first term in office creating the first new branch of the armed services in 73 years.

The U.S. Air Force, of which the Space Force is an extension, was formally authorized by Congress in 1961, with enabling legislation signed into law by President John F. Kennedy.

“The establishment of the USSF resulted from widespread recognition that Space was a national security imperative,” according to the Space Force website at spaceforce.mil. “When combined with the growing threat posed by near-peer competitors in space, it became clear there was a need for a military service focused solely on pursuing superiority in the space domain.”

The established Space Force seal adopted Jan. 15, 2020, illustrates, according to SpaceForce.mil, seal “on a dark blue disc, between two constellations in white, a light blue globe grid-lined in silver surmounted by a silver delta both encircled diagonally by a white orbit ring, all beneath a white Northern star in the upper left portion of the disc and above the Roman numerals MMXIX [2019, the year of the Space Force’s establishment] arching in white below.

“Encircling the disc is a dark blue designation band edged with an inner and outer border and between two deltas, the inscription UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE at top and DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE at bottom, all in white.”

The central delta insignia was first used in 1942 by the United States Army Air Forces, and then adopted by the Air Force’s early space program in 1961.

When the U.S. Mint offered the 1-ounce silver medal versions of this series honoring the other U.S. military branches, the 40.6-millimeter medals were reported to have no mintage limits or household-order restrictions.

For the 2.5-ounce silver 50.8-millimeter-diameter versions of the medals, the mintages were limited to 10,000 medals for each service represented.

The bronze duplicate medals have unlimited mintages.

The bronze and silver medals are struck at the Philadelphia Mint sans the facility’s P Mint mark.

The U.S. Space Force is a separate military service but is organized under the Department of the Air Force, and its headquarters is located in the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, along with the other branches. The Space Operations Command (SpOC) is located at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The command has operated from the Colorado Springs base since its inception in 2019. The location for a permanent home has been the subject of a years-long political debate, with the Biden administration reversing President Trump’s first term decision to move the command’s headquarters to Huntsville, Alabama.

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