Space Systems Command's Order66 Develops New AI-Empowered App to Streamline Guardian Onboarding Published Dec. 9, 2025 By Lisa Sodders, SSC Public Affairs EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- The Space Systems Command (SSC) team behind the app to help Guardians solve common IT problems themselves is back again! This time, it’s with a new AI-powered tool designed to simplify onboarding for Guardians: the Polaris Onboarding Agent. SSC’s Order66, a software factory within SSC’s S6 organization, recently won the Space Force Guardian’s Choice Award for the tool, and is a finalist in the Space Force AI Challenge. The team will be one of four advancing to the Grand Prize and Chief of Space Operations Choice Award, which will be announced Dec. 12 at the 2025 Space Power Conference in Orlando, Fla. “The future of onboarding isn’t a packet, it’s a partner,” said Paul Miranda, lead user experience designer for the team. “Everyone sees onboarding or in-processing as a paperwork burden more than a process that helps people get settled into the job and be ready for the mission. That’s why we created the Polaris Onboarding Agent to help people get integrated into the mission faster.” “Ultimately, it’s about readiness,” Miranda said. “We need to empower our Guardians to be ready – and not be distracted with paperwork and having to worry about their family while they’re preparing to support the mission.” Across the force, onboarding typically takes 31 hours per member, said Lindsey Slutz, senior UX designer for Order66. At enterprise scale, that’s more than 3.25 million hours every year — the equivalent of more than 2,200 full-time personnel spent on tasks that should be coordinated, automated, or eliminated. Even using conservative estimates, Polaris returns significant time to the mission, Slutz said. Saving just six hours per member adds up to more than 834,000 hours a year. Last year, the team had one of the winning projects at the inaugural 2024 Space Force GenAI Challenge with its innovative, mission-aligned AI solution, AskPolaris, which allows Guardians to solve common IT issues themselves, such as trouble logging into a laptop or VPN issues, which make up the bulk of IT tickets. That tool, which has been rebranded as the Polaris IT Agent, is currently under development and is expected to begin testing early next year. “We view the Polaris Onboarding Agent and Polaris IT Agent as the foundation of a broader constellation of AI-driven capabilities,” said Wuan Perkins, program manager for Order66. “Over time, this family of agents will support Guardians across their entire lifecycle -- from accelerating mission readiness to empowering personal growth, career development, and financial well-being.” The team started doing research for the Polaris Onboarding Agent in July of 2025. “One thing we were hearing in our research was that some of these onboarding packets were outdated and Guardians didn’t have the information they needed,” Slutz said. “That really brought about the idea of using AI to keep things updated and help them find the resources they needed, when they needed them.” “When Guardians do a Permanent Change of Station (PCS), the administrative process can feel like starting over,” said TSgt. Lee Harder, product manager with Order66. “It’s comparable to going to a new state’s DMV where none of your records follow you. We’re working to replace that with a unified, efficient system that integrates with existing personnel systems to streamline onboarding and dramatically speed up the entire process.” “It’s currently not a fun process for anybody, and so trying to simplify it for every single person is top priority for every leader because if you don’t have people, you don’t have a mission,” said TSgt. Michaela Sosville, Order66 software development manager. The Polaris Onboarding Agent will provide a personalized experience tailored to meet Guardians’ needs, while also giving organizations the flexibility to manage their own processes, as the process can vary by location. Powered by AI agents, the app leverages automations and adaptive workflows to make the onboarding process seamless. Onboarding also is a family process, involving the Guardian’s spouses and children, which is why the app is designed to be used by spouses and children older than 16, but with built-in Department of War security standards to keep data safe. Each user’s profile is encrypted, access-controlled, and private. “Typically, when we move, some communication gets lost,” Harder said. “We really want to make a platform available for spouses to be able to access in order to effectively make decisions for the family. For example, my wife’s a planner and I’m not, so she has to be able to plan and prepare for what could be a major life transition.” “I think chatbots in some ways have gotten a bad rap by being added into products without truly adding value,” Slutz said. “Instead of a focusing on GenAI, Polaris Onboarding Agent uses agentic AI to turn guidance into action. It clears bottlenecks, handles tasks, and accelerates readiness from day one. It’s AI that makes sense; it’s solving a problem, instead of just having AI thrown into something.” “AI is powerful when it understands context,” Miranda added. “The more it understands people and what their needs are, the better an AI will be able to provide a service for that user or do a task for a user. If you look at onboarding, the process is highly generalized: you get paperwork, you get a checklist, and it doesn’t really take into account what your needs are, your personal needs – and we all have our different needs.” For example: what if a Guardian has a child who has Type 1 Diabetes, Slutz said. What medical records will the family need? How can they find an endocrinologist in their new location quickly? What about employment opportunities for the spouse – either on or off base? In Los Angeles, there’s often a long wait for on-base housing, so Polaris could provide the necessary paperwork to start that process and suggest which local schools will best fit the family’s needs. “If Polaris knows this information, it can go ahead and provide that for you when it knows that you’re going to be moving,” Slutz said. The team is currently focusing the app on Guardians on-boarding to specific bases but eventually would like to open up the platform to include government civilians and contractors, Harder said. “We want onboarding to match the level of technology people expect from the Space Force,” Harder said. “Too often, new members face outdated email chains and static checklists. The team believes positive first impressions are imperative to retaining talent.” “Even if you were staying in the same location but moving to a different team – the app is also onboarding you onto that team,” Slutz said. “What is the team dynamic like? What do you need to get started with that role?” The app also will learn as people use it and can adapt automatically if various officials change roles. With the right resources, the Polaris Onboarding Agent could be rolled out to a few bases within a year, Perkins said. Guardians and their families won’t be the only ones to benefit from the new app, Harder said. “Polaris will enable leaders to make truly data-driven decisions,” Harder said. “By capturing accurate onboarding metrics, leaders can understand exactly how long it takes to bring a member on mission, allocate resources more effectively, and ensure system access is delivered within days, not weeks. That data also gives senior leadership clear visibility into bottlenecks so we can identify pain points and accelerate improvement across the enterprise.”