← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
Are satellites vulnerable to eavesdropping?
00:25:48
New research shows satellites are vulnerable to eavesdropping. Space Pioneer raises $350M. Impulse Space announces its new lunar lander plans. And more.
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You're listening to the N2K Space Network.
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Today is October 14th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazes and this is T minus.
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T minus 20 seconds to Los G.
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Dress go for deploy. SpaceX successfully conducted the 11th test flight of Starship 4. Approximately five hundred and fifty staff are to be laid off from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Impulse Space announces its new plan for a new lunar lander. Space Pioneer raises approximately $350 million in its latest funding rounds. New research shows that around half of geostationary satellite signals are vulnerable to eavesdropping. Our guest today is David Barnhart, CEO and founder of arkisis. We're going to be talking about their new contract to manage the Astrobees on the International Space Station. So stick around for more on today's headlines. Hi everybody. Happy Tuesday and thank you for joining me after the long weekend. Let's get into it. A new study from the University of California, San Diego and the University of Maryland has found that vast amounts of geostationary satellite traffic, specifically cellular backhaul traffic, are being transmitted without encryption. The team demonstrated that with commercially available equipment they were able to intercept sensitive unencrypted data from corporate, government and critical infrastructure systems. The types of data include voice calls, SMS and in flight Internet sessions. Now there's a new story in Wired Today detailing the study which we have linked for you in the show notes in addition to the original study itself. But the gist of it is this. Over the course of three years, the researchers used an off the shelf $800 satellite receiver system and picked up the communications of geosynchronous satellites. The Wired P says this they obtained samples of the contents of Americans calls and text messages on T Mobile's cellular network, data from airline passengers in flight WI fi browsing communications to and from critical infrastructure such as electric utilities and offshore oil and gas platforms and and even US And Mexican military and law enforcement communications that reveal the locations of personnel, equipment and facilities. From the researchers antenna location in San Diego they were only able to eavesdrop on about 15% of geosynchronous satellites. So the researchers say that no doubt a lot more sensitive unencrypted cellular backhaul data than they were able to access is wide open to surveillance. The researchers did contact a number of the network owners of their findings, with mixed success, they say, so it is still unknown how much cellular backhaul traffic is being transmitted via satellite unencrypted. And for our next story, let's turn our attention to China now, where Tianbing Technology, better known internationally as Space Pioneer, has announced that it has completed nearly 2.5 billion RMB, or about $340 million in combined pre D and D round financing. The funding comes from multiple Chinese investment groups and will support mass production of rockets and engines, new vehicle development and expansion of the company's vertically integrated manufacturing network. Space pioneer Tianlong 3 heavy lift rocket capable of delivering over 20 tons to low Earth orbit, is positioned as China's answer to SpaceX's Falcon 9 and it aims to support large scale satellite Constellation deployment. Space Pioneer now operates a nationwide production chain in China with an annual capacity of 50 rockets and 500 engines. In a new company update, Impulse Space says that it has its sights on delivering heavier payloads to the moon via a new lunar lander. Specifically, Impulse outlined how its Helios Kick stage and dedicated lunar lander could deliver up to 3 tons of cargo to the lunar surface. The architecture leverages existing launch vehicles, transferring payloads from low Earth orbit to lunar orbit within about a week before autonomous descent. Impulse says the design will enable sustained lunar logistics, bridging the gap between small commercial payloads and larger human rated systems, and the company plans to begin lunar missions by 2028. The workforce at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab have taken another hit this week. Not only are the workers affected by furloughs due to the government shutdown, some have been laid off in another round of workforce reductions. In a message from JPL Director Dave Gallagher, employees were notified that JPL is undergoing a realignment of its workforce, which is part of a reorganization that began in July and is reportedly not related to the current government shutdown. It will affect approximately 550 of JPL employees across technical, business and support areas. Employees will be notified of their Status Today, Tuesday, October 14th and over the weekend, SpaceX successfully conducted the 11th test flight of Starship from its Starbase spaceport in Texas. It was the final flight of the second generation Starship and first generation Super Heavy Booster. Liftoff from Starbase was nominal, with super heavy igniting all 33 raptor engines and ascending over the Gulf during the flight. Starship successfully deployed eight Starlink simulators and executed the third in space relight of a Raptor engine engine demonstrating a critical capability for future deorbit burns. Starship then re entered the Earth's atmosphere and was able to gather extensive data on the performance of its heat shield as it was intentionally stressed to test the limits of the vehicle's capabilities. So yeah, it ended in a fireball. But in the final minutes of flight, Starship performed a dynamic banking maneuver to mimic the trajectory that future missions returning to Starbase will fly. Starship then guided itself using its four flaps to the preplanned splashdown zone in the Indian Ocean, successfully executing a landing flip, landing burn and splashdown. SpaceX says every major objective of the flight test was achieved, providing valuable data as they prepare the next generation of Starship and super heavy and that's our Intel Briefing for this Tuesday after our three day weekend. Read all about our top five stories in the Show Notes in your podcast app or at our website space.n2k.com and there's always a few extra stories that we like to include for you to read up about N2K senior producer Alice Carruth joins us now with the other stories that we've included in the Show Notes. Alice, what do you have for us? Maria Momentous and Solstar Space have signed a service agreement. Rocket Lab is gearing up for an OWL new world mission. No, I didn't just slip into cockney. They're really leaning into the OWL theme. We've included an editorial from Scientific American on why NASA is crucial to the US winning the new space race, and an announcement from World Space week about their 2026 chair. Spoiler alert. It's ULA's CEO Tory Bruno. That's right. And hi T minus crew. In case you didn't know, we post links to every episode of T Minus Space Daily along with the major headlines on our LinkedIn page. Just look for N2K T Space Daily on LinkedIn and click Follow to get our episodes and headlines directly in your feed every weekday and Saturday. Now, a lot of us are spending quite a bit of time on LinkedIn nowadays, and surely a daily space intel briefing from us would be a nice break from the posts about how Taytay's latest album relates to B2B sales. Right? Right. N2K T space daily on LinkedIn. Tap that follow button and thanks.
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Today I'm speaking with David Barnhart, CEO and founder of Arcasis. Our chat today is all about the future of everyone's favorite robots aboard the iss, the Astrobees. Here's our chat.
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First and foremost, it's a big honor. We're seriously humbled because there's just, there's no question a lot of work and effort and innovation and ideas and blood, sweat and tears, et cetera, have gone into it from the NASA Ames engineers, the managers that sort of created it. And then, as you might imagine, to get something like that to operate inside the iss, the safety process that has to go through, the logistics, the communications that occurs. I mean, it essentially to fly a little Astrobee, which is this free flying platform that is inside the International Space Station, it covers at least three centers in real time at one time. So it's a really big deal. The cool thing is that NASA has been moving to the construct of commercial transition for now a decade. Right. So it's not surprising. And it follows NASA's approach where they'll create something from a research standpoint or experiment or do something that not necessarily industry would buy into, and then they then transition it. So this whole enterprise of the Asterby facility, as it's called, went through a commercial transition path that went through what's called an Unfunded Space act agreement. That's what it was. So in the end, we now are considered the sustainers and the maintainers of the Asterby facility, which includes devices that are on the ground to test before anybody sends up, and then the actual free flyers that are inside the International Space Station.
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That is quite an honor. And a lot of us really love the whole Astrobee facility. We're big fans, so sort of a lot of us love them. So I'm very excited for you all. This is great news.
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Yeah, no, it, no, it really is. And I mean, I mean, the big thing for us and if, you know, we take a step back and your listeners take a step back, why did we even do this? We did it because, in all honesty, if you look at Astrobee, it is a microcosm of a port. The idea that you can send things up, whether it's inside the ISS or outside, gets connected to something else. Tests occur, experiments are done, innovations are explored, and then somebody else comes in. So it's a. It's an entire process that was a microcosm of what we hope to achieve from a strategic standpoint to actually really increase the global uptake for Inspace marketplace and operations. And so it was a natural fit, a natural progression. I and several of my team members also had direct experience because we actually were. I was a PI on one of the experiments that went into Aster be, and so.
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Oh wow.
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Were very, very sort of familiar with it, comfortable with it, even a little background. When I was at darpa, I actually managed the precursor to this mission or this mission capability called Spheres, and this whole thing, again, building on giants, right? We're standing on the shoulders of giants here. Dr. David Miller out of MIT was the one who saw the Star wars movie and thought, why can't we make a little flying thing like Luke Skywalker is battling inside the millen talking, right? So sure enough, his students came up with the idea of this free flyer that they called originally Spheres, built it, launched it, it was funded by darpa. When I got to darpa, I actually inherited the program, developed two other experiments that went up to it, and then I was responsible to help make the transition out of MIT to Ames, who then took it and actually created Astrobee based upon all the work that was done by mit.
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Wow, what an incredible heritage and connection. Honestly, it makes a lot of sense, all of it, contextually. Even more so now, because I was going to ask about how it all fits into your growth strategy, but you already addressed that. So I guess what I would wonder, I think what everyone's wondering is what is next for astrov? What are your plans?
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Yeah, no, that's a good question. As you might imagine, while it's very small in a physical aspect, it's the logistics and the various organizational connectivity between all the NASA centers we're still trying to get our hands around.
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Yep.
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I'm lucky enough to have been sort of introduced to a number of the offices at Johnson. I know the folks working with Ames who originally put all this together. Going to meet some folks at Marshall Space Flight center that are also involved as the payloads. So the rollout strategy, if you will, big picture, we probably aren't going to be doing any user sponsored flights until January, starting in the new year, but up until that time we're coming out with, we're going to have presentations on October 13th actually that will be available publicly. We're doing a real time in person meeting here in Los Angeles. And then on October 22nd there's, we're going to be speaking at the ISS Payload Operators Integrated Working Group meeting, or POAG as they call it. Again, each one is very slowly sort of again identifying and making sure that first and foremost from our standpoint as a commercial entity, is that we work within and with the NASA processes. That's, that's sort of the number one priority. Right. So, so being a little cautious, you know, instead of just charging in where angels fear to tread, we are, we're trying to wrap our hands around this and make sure that we can support as many cool new innovations as possible. Because in all honesty, and as soon as you transition out of sort of pure science and research and you open up potentially to commercial, then there's all kinds of wonderful wild ideas that are out there that we want to try to accomplish. So absolutely. Our website is now up and it talks about there's a button for Astrobee and you can sort of walk through it. And we're beginning to take inputs from people as to hey, I want to know what Astrobee is. I'd like to potentially sign up. That's great. We're going to get all of that put together and then sort of eventually we'll roll out details about how to do that.
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Fantastic. We'll definitely keep our eyes and ears peeled for more updates as they come out. This feels like a very interesting point of inflection point potentially for the future of isam. And I'm just curious, from your vantage point, what are your thoughts on the current state and where you see things going?
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It is interesting. And that's the other reason why in all honesty, there's a number of companies, a number of us, I would argue competitors and collaborators, we're all trying to do the same thing. And that is basically to convey and convince various users, whether government or commercial or others, that the idea of post launch things that we can do in space is real. So as you pointed out, that's defined as isam, right? Or Space Servicing or OSAM or you know, there's a bunch of whichever acronym, whatever you want to the cool thing that honestly, I think Astrobee will do, we hope is not just for our company, obviously, but for the community at large, is to showcase the value proposition of devices that can be operated in zero G, that can demonstrate and buy down risk specifically for some of those key challenges that, that still face isam. There's no question about it. Right. So my hope, honestly one of the things that we really want to do is to sort of have seminars or webinars for the two largest at the moment, public private consortiums that are trying to wrap their hands around and support the entire industry in isam. That's both confers and cosmic as to, you know, what, what could a device like Astrobee do for you? Right. How could it help and then eventually translate that into buying down the skepticism that may be within either the US Government, the European government, wherever else. Right. So that's honestly that what I see is I'm hoping it's going to be another one of the rings and sort of the ladder that's getting us up to the finally now people accept that ISAM is real and now here's all the things that it can do. The next step, of course is the big one is making the commercial business case so that it really picks up and that becomes the anchor for a lot of things that happen.
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We will keep an eye out as it develops for sure. I want to make sure I give you opportunity for any wrap up thoughts or concluding statements or whatever, however formal you want to put that.
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Just a big shout out. We want as many people as possible to either engage with Astrobee or just follow along if they don't want to fly. The whole point is that we want as many ideas as possible. We are in essence again a sustainer, maintainer of one of the more unique and you know, both on the earth and off the earth, test platforms that can validate and generate some really cool things specifically related to isam. And how do we then sort of get other, other people into it? You know, we're open to work with, with anybody. That's, that's sort of the point. That's sort of why the transition to commercial is there. The hope is that we can, we can bring in a wider audience, a wider group of potential users to potentially utilize what Astrobee is for and then eventually take the next step outside the issuance.
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Foreign. We'll be right back.
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Welcome back. A shout out today to space artist Pierre Voyer, often better known online by his handle spacepart39b, who is one giant step closer to his life goal of making art in space one day. He recently boarded an International Institute for Astronautical Sciences zero G flight as part of a scientific experiment. And yeah, he got to paint in zero gravity. Photos of this whole experience are on his Instagram. We've linked it for you and there he is with his whole artist kit. In his own words, among an extremely rare group of artists who have had the chance to create in weightlessness. Piero says he got a lot of inspiration from astronaut artists Cyan Proctor and Nicole Stott. And Stott apparently gave him some great pro tips on preparing to paint in space. Obligatory mention here that I have interviewed both Cyan Proctor and Nicole Stott in back episodes and they both talked about their experiences as artists in space. So who better to pass on their knowledge about this unique place to make art? I love everything about this story. Congratulations Piero, on your wonderful milestone. Cannot wait to see what you've created and to see the heights that you will no doubt soar to from here. And that's T minus. Brought to you by N2K CyberWire we'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like the show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to spacentuk.com we're proud that N2K CyberWire is part of the daily routine of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector. From the Fortune 500 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies, N2K helps space and cybersecurity professionals grow, learn and stay informed. As the nexus for discovery and connection, we bring you the people, the technology and the the ideas shaping the future of secure innovation. Learn how@n2k.com N2K Senior Producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We are mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman, our Executive producer is Jennifer Ibin. Peter Kilpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thank you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.
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T minus.