AST SpaceMobile is on a roll.

Summary

T-Minus Space Daily: AST SpaceMobile is on a Roll Hosted by N2K Networks | Released on February 26, 2025

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1. AST SpaceMobile’s Milestone Achievements

The episode kicks off with exciting news for AST SpaceMobile, highlighting a series of successes that underscore the company's burgeoning role in the global space industry.

• Contract Award: AST SpaceMobile has secured a significant contract supporting the U.S. Space Development Agency through a prime contractor, projected to generate $43 million in revenue. This achievement follows their successful testing of the Blue Walker 3 satellite under a previous contract announced in February 2024.

  "AST SpaceMobile has been awarded a contract in support of the U.S. Space Development Agency through a prime contractor with total expected revenue of $43 million." – Maria Varmazas [04:35]

• Bluebird Satellites Launch: The company plans to deploy its next-generation Block 2 Bluebird satellites, which feature the largest commercial phased array antennas ever placed in low Earth orbit. These antennas span 2,400 square feet, setting a new benchmark for advanced connectivity and performance.

  "AST's Block 2 Bluebird satellites feature the largest commercial phased array antennas ever deployed in low Earth orbit. They will span 2,400 square feet, which AST says will set a new standard for advanced connectivity and performance." – Host Maria Varmazas [05:00]

• Live Demonstrations: AST SpaceMobile has also celebrated a week of successful live video call demonstrations, showcasing the practical applications of their cutting-edge technology.

2. SpaceX Falcon 9 Incident Over Europe

A notable incident involving SpaceX is discussed, where a Falcon 9 second stage experienced a minor liquid oxygen leak during the coast phase of the Starlink 114 mission, launched on February 1 from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

• Incident Details: The leak led to higher than expected vehicle body rates, preventing the execution of the deorbit burn and resulting in the stage re-entering Earth's atmosphere over Europe. Debris was subsequently found in Poland.

  "SpaceX says during the coast phase of the Starlink 114 mission, a small liquid oxygen leak developed and that ultimately drove higher than expected vehicle body rates." – Maria Varmazas [05:30]

• Response and Mitigation: SpaceX is actively investigating the root cause and has implemented measures to prevent similar issues in future flights. Additionally, the company is collaborating with the Polish government on debris recovery and cleanup efforts.

  "Teams are actively assessing the root cause of the source of the leak and say that they have already implemented mitigations for future flights." – Maria Varmazas [05:50]

3. AstroScale’s Address J Mission Completion

AstroScale marks a significant achievement with the successful completion of Phase One of the Address J commercial debris removal demonstration for the Japanese Space Agency JAXA.

• Mission Success: Address J successfully observed and conducted two fly-around operations of the rocket upper stage debris, capturing the first-ever footage during an ultra-close approach at just 15 meters.

  "Address J successfully completed all observations of the debris required by the JAXA mission, including two fly around operations." – Maria Varmazas [06:15]

• Implications for Debris Removal: These accomplishments provide critical data for the upcoming Address J2 mission, enhancing capabilities for effective space debris management.

4. Ariane 6’s Upcoming Launch

The episode details the imminent launch of Ariane 6 and its passenger, the CSO3 satellite, scheduled for March 3rd. This mission is particularly noteworthy as it represents Ariane 6's first commercial flight, following its inaugural launch in July the previous year.

• Mission Details: CSO3 will be launched on behalf of the French Defense Procurement and Technology Agency and CNES, serving the French Air and Space Force's Space Command.

  "Ariane 6 and its passenger, the CSO3 satellite, are scheduled to launch on March 3rd. This will be the first commercial flight for Europe's new heavy lift launcher." – Maria Varmazas [06:45]

• Launch Readiness: Despite an initial delay, Arianespace has completed additional ground operations, confirming the new launch date and time: March 3rd at 1:24 PM local time in Kourou, French Guiana.

5. NASA’s Artemis Gateway Power and Propulsion Element Assembly

NASA is progressing with the assembly of the Gateway Lunar Space Station's Power and Propulsion Element (PPE), a critical module that will facilitate the station's journey to and around the Moon.

• Assembly Progress: Technicians are installing key hardware on the PPE’s propulsion bus module, incorporating both electric and chemical propulsion control modules. This element is managed from NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and built by Maxar Space Systems in California.

  "Technicians are installing key hardware on the element's propulsion bus module following the installation of both electric propulsion and chemical propulsion control modules." – Maria Varmazas [07:10]

• Launch Plans: The PPE will launch alongside Gateway’s Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), preceding NASA's Artemis 4 mission.

6. Launch Night for Intuitive Machines’ IM2 Mission

Transitioning to launch news, N2K’s senior producer Alice Carruth reports on the upcoming launch of Intuitive Machines’ second lunar mission (IM2).

• Mission Schedule: The IM2 mission is set to lift off at 7:17 PM Eastern Time on a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center. Additional details and related stories are available in the show notes.

  "It's launch night for Intuitive Machines' second mission to the moon. IM2 is due to lift off at 7:17 PM Eastern time on a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center." – Alice Carruth [06:54]

7. Exclusive Interview with Rahul Raghani, Chief Systems Engineer at Arcasis

A significant portion of the episode features an insightful interview with Rahul Raghani, Chief Systems Engineer at Arcasis, a startup focused on developing a robotic platform for hosted payloads in low Earth orbit.

• Company Background: Arcasis, based in Southern California and founded around five years ago, aims to revolutionize how experiments and payloads are hosted in space. Raghani shares his journey from meeting the company's founder during his graduate studies at USC to his role in advancing the company's mission.

  "We're working on a platform for hosted payloads. Think of it like a little motel in space where anyone can send their experiment up and host it on our platform." – Rahul Raghani [09:58]

• Innovative Solutions: The platform allows researchers and organizations to deploy experiments without the hefty investment of building an entire satellite, potentially lowering costs from $3-5 million to more manageable figures based on the experiment's duration.

  "If they only need to do a three-month experiment, they only pay for three months. They don't need to buy a whole satellite that costs $3 to $5 million." – Rahul Raghani [10:19]

• Future Vision: Arcasis envisions a transformative impact on scientific research in orbit, aligning with the growing In-Space Manufacturing (ISAM) ecosystem. The company plans to launch a small demo mission in mid-2026, followed by a full platform launch a year later capable of hosting up to 60 payloads simultaneously.

  "We're going to launch a small demo mission in 2026, mid-2026. And then about a year after that, we'll launch our full platform that can host up to 60 payloads at a time." – Rahul Raghani [12:20]

• Strategic Design: The platform is ingeniously designed to fit within a SpaceX Falcon 9 fairing, ensuring immediate launch capabilities without waiting for the upcoming Starship launches.

  "It's big, but it fits in a SpaceX Falcon 9 fairing. You don't even need to wait for Starship." – Rahul Raghani [12:37]

• Industry Impact: Raghani underscores the pivotal role of ISAM, predicting a tenfold increase in space operations and manipulation within the next decade, positioning Arcasis at the forefront of this frontier.

  "ISAM is the next growing frontier in space. I expect to see a tenfold increase in the next decade on doing operations in space and being able to manipulate things in space." – Rahul Raghani [13:08]

8. Highlights from the 2025 American Astronomical Society Meeting

Wrapping up the episode, Maria Varmazas delves into groundbreaking astronomical findings presented at the 2025 American Astronomical Society Meeting.

• Disintegrating Exoplanets: Two teams, one from Penn State using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and another from MIT utilizing the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), unveiled studies on K2-22b and its counterpart orbiting Star BD054868. These exoplanets are undergoing extreme tidal forces, leading to their disintegration.

  "These planets are literally spilling their guts into space for us." – Nick, PhD student at Penn State [14:00]

• K2-22b: This Neptune-sized planet orbits its star every 9.1 hours, sustaining surface temperatures around 2100 Kelvin, causing its rocky surface to vaporize and form a dust tail reminiscent of a comet.

• Star BD054868’s Planet: Similar phenomena are observed with a Moon-sized planet orbiting every 30.5 hours, generating two massive dust tails that obscure 1% of the star's light and are estimated to vaporize roughly one moon's worth of dust every million years, giving the planet an estimated lifespan of about one million years.

  "With JWST we finally have the means to study their composition and see what planets orbiting other stars are really made of." – Nick, Penn State [14:15]

Conclusion

The episode of T-Minus Space Daily on February 26, 2025, provides a comprehensive overview of pivotal developments in the space sector, from AST SpaceMobile's impressive contract win and SpaceX's Falcon 9 incident to AstroScale's debris removal success and NASA's Artemis Gateway assembly. The in-depth interview with Rahul Raghani of Arcasis offers a glimpse into the future of hosted payloads and in-space manufacturing, while recent astronomical discoveries add to the ever-expanding knowledge of our universe. For space enthusiasts and professionals alike, this episode encapsulates the dynamic and rapidly evolving landscape of space exploration and technology.

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For more detailed information and additional stories covered in this episode, visit space.n2k.com and check the podcast show notes.

Transcript

[Maria Varmazas]

You're listening to the N2K space network.

[Rahul Raghani]

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[Maria Varmazas]

Today is February 26th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazas and this is T Min T minus 20 seconds. Assembly is underway for Gateway Lunar Space Station's power and propulsion element 4. Ariane 6 and its passenger, the CSO3 satellite are scheduled to launch on March 3rd. Astro scales address J concludes phase one of the commercial removal of debris demonstration for JAX. SpaceX says a small liquid oxygen leak caused its Falcon 9 second stage to re enter Earth's atmosphere over Europe last week. AST Space Mobile has been awarded a contract in support of the U.S. space Development Agency through a prime contractor with a total expected revenue of 43 million doll and our guest today is Rahul Raghani, Chief Systems Engineer at arcasis. And I spoke to Rahul about developing a robotic platform for hosted payloads in low Earth orbit. So stick around for more on that after today's intelligence briefing. Happy hump day everybody. We're kicking off with more good news for AST Space Mobile. They're having a great week after successful live video call demonstrations. But the top news for them today is a contract award. AST Space Mobile has been awarded a contract in support of the U.S. space Development Agency through a prime contractor with total expected revenue of $43 million. This new contract follows successful testing on Blue Walker 3 in orbit under the previous contract announced in February 2024. AST will use its next generation block 2 Bluebird satellites to create robust and resilient communications solutions for the US government. AST's Block 2 Bluebird satellites feature the largest commercial phased array antennas ever deployed in low Earth orbit. They will span 2,400 square feet, which AST says will set a new standard for advanced connectivity and performance. It's been a week since reports of a fireball were shared across social media by users in the uk, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. The source was quickly confirmed to be a Falcon 9 second stage, with debris later found on the ground in Poland. SpaceX says that during the coast phase of the Starlink 114 mission, which was launched on February 1 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, a small liquid oxygen leak developed and that ultimately drove higher than expected vehicle body rates. SpaceX says they were unable to perform the deorbit burn and the vehicle was successfully passivated on orbit to remove sources of stored energy. Teams are actively assessing the root cause of the source of the leak and say that they have already implemented mitigations for future flights. SpaceX says it's working closely with the government of Poland on recovery and cleanup efforts. Moving over to Japan now Astro Scale's Address J concludes Phase one of the commercial removal of debris demonstration for Japan's space agency jaxa. To mark the occasion, astroscale Japan has unveiled the first ever footage captured during address J's ultra close approach, which reached just 15 meters from the rocket upper stage Address J successfully completed all observations of the debris required by the JAXA mission, including two fly around operations. These accomplishments have provided critical data to inform the follow on address J2 debris removal mission Ariane 6 and its passenger, the CSO3 satellite, are scheduled to launch on March 3rd. The VA263 mission will be the first commercial flight for Europe's new heavy lift launcher Ariane 6 after the successful inaugural flight in July last year. Air and Space will launch the CSO3 satellite for the French Defense Procurement and Technology Agency and the French space agency CNES on behalf of the French Air and Space Force's Space Command. This is a rescheduling of the mission that was originally planned for this week. Arianespace says additional operations on the ground are now completed, authorizing the company to launch on March 3rd at 1:24pm local time in Kourou, French Guiana. And turning our focus now to the United States, assembly is underway for Gateway's Power and Propulsion Element, which is the module that will power the Lunar Space Station's journey to and around the moon. As part of NASA's Artemis campaign, technicians are installing key hardware on the element's propulsion bus module following installation of both electric propulsion and chemical propulsion control modules. The Power and Propulsion Element is managed out of NASA's Glenn Research center in Cleveland and built by Maxar Space Systems in California. The Power and Propulsion Element will launch with Gateways habitation and Logistics Outpost, known as halo, ahead of NASA's Artemis 4 mission. And we've got a lot to look forward to this evening. Us space nerds N2K's senior producer Alice Carruth has more on that. Over to you, Alice.

[Alice Carruth]

Yes, Maria. It's launch night for intuitive machines. Second mission to the moon. IM2 is due to lift off at 7:17pm Eastern time on a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center. We've included more details on that launch in our show notes along with two additional stories. One on Space Command possibly being moved to Alabama and another announcing a promotion at saic.

[Maria Varmazas]

And let's please remind our listeners where they can find all of those stories.

[Alice Carruth]

Links to further reading on all the stories mentioned throughout the show can be found in the podcast Show Notes and also at our website space.n2k.com just click on this episode title.

[Maria Varmazas]

Hey T Minus Crew. If you find this podcast useful, please do us a favor and share a five star rating and short review in your favorite podcast app. It'll help other space professionals like you to find the show and join the T minus crew. Thank you. We really appreciate it.

[Rahul Raghani]

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[Maria Varmazas]

Raghani Chief Systems Engineer at Arcasis.

[Rahul Raghani]

I'm the chief Systems Engineer at Arcasis, a small startup in Southern California based in the LA area. And we've been around for about five years now and we've been developing a robotic platform for hosted payloads in low earth orbit. But I got involved in this company when I met the founder who was my research advisor at USC when I was doing my graduate studies.

[Maria Varmazas]

Oh, neat. Okay, usc. Which usc? Is it just, just usc or which one?

[Rahul Raghani]

Like specifically the USC School of Astronaut.

[Maria Varmazas]

Cool. Cool. Very cool. Very cool.

[Rahul Raghani]

Yeah.

[Maria Varmazas]

So you met him when you were a grad student?

[Rahul Raghani]

Yes.

[Maria Varmazas]

So how did you know you wanted to go into aerospace engineering? Like, what was your origin story there?

[Rahul Raghani]

I mean, since I was a kid, I'm really interested in space. Really? Just watching all those shuttle launches, it was really inspiring.

[Maria Varmazas]

Very cool, Very cool. All right, so tell me about what you're working on.

[Rahul Raghani]

Yeah, so At ARC Sys, we're working on a platform for hosted payloads. So kind of like think of it like a little motel in space that anyone wants to send their experiment up, they can host it on our platform. Kind of like we have an interface, kind of like a space USB that they plug into so we can plug it in with a robotic arm into our platform, they can run their experiment and then when they're done, they stop paying rent and utilities and then we safely deorbit them and put a new payload in its place.

[Maria Varmazas]

Oh cool.

[Rahul Raghani]

So if they only need to do a three month experiment, they only pay for three months. They don't need to buy a whole satellite that costs 3 to 5 million dollars.

[Maria Varmazas]

Ah. So the vision there definitely would be very transformative for how we're doing science on orbit right now.

[Rahul Raghani]

Exactly.

[Maria Varmazas]

Science and all sorts of cool things really. So that would fit in really, really interestingly with the growing like space ISAM ecosystem that's happening right now.

[Rahul Raghani]

Yeah, for sure. I mean we, our long term goal is be able to build things in space and build new satellites in orbit. That, that's how we got into this business. But as we started, we saw that there was a huge market for hosted payloads and experiments in orbit. And we're using that as a stepping stone to get to our eventual goal of building things in space. Cool.

[Maria Varmazas]

So what kind of, you know, what kind of hosted payloads would you all be able to take on?

[Rahul Raghani]

Really anything that needs to run in space. So we have a. Fewer customers are doing biological experiments, they're doing TRL raising missions. So they want to get their technology tested in orbit.

[Maria Varmazas]

Yep.

[Rahul Raghani]

There's new sensors, new materials, really anything that needs to be in vacuum in space to do its task.

[Maria Varmazas]

It's so funny, I recently just had a conversation about orbital testbeds. So it's like this is a very, very timely conversation. So yeah, tell me a bit about sort of where you all are in your development.

[Rahul Raghani]

Yeah, So I mean we have designed our entire platform on the ground. We have built a full scale mock up of our spacecraft with a robotic arm that our partners at Motivate Space Systems in Pasadena have loaned us. We have that arm manipulating payloads, attaching it to other spacecraft mockups, and we're in the process of closing our seed rays for venture capital so we can build and launch this thing.

[Maria Varmazas]

Fantastic. So timelines, because especially if you all are in seed rays right now. I know it's very, it's a really big time for you all. So tell me about what you think for timelines?

[Rahul Raghani]

Yeah, timeline. We're going to launch a small demo mission 2026, mid-2026. And then about a year after that we'll launch our full platform that can host up to 60 payloads at a time.

[Maria Varmazas]

Wow. How big? Oh say how big are we talking?

[Rahul Raghani]

Yeah, we're talking about three meters in diameter.

[Maria Varmazas]

Wow.

[Rahul Raghani]

Yeah.

[Maria Varmazas]

So yeah, that's impressive. Okay.

[Rahul Raghani]

It's big, but it fits in a SpaceX Falcon 9 fairing.

[Maria Varmazas]

That's amazing.

[Rahul Raghani]

You don't even need to wait for Starship.

[Maria Varmazas]

I was going to say that was my other question. That's really cool. So smart design on that. You know that Falcon 9 is doing a great job.

[Rahul Raghani]

So Starship is going to be great, but it's not, it's not here yet. So we can't just buy a launch on Starship.

[Maria Varmazas]

That's right. Not yet. One day we know that'll happen soon, but not yet. That makes a lot of sense. Well, that's really cool. So yeah. What do you want to impart to our listeners and viewers before we head out today?

[Rahul Raghani]

I think really that ISAM is the next growing frontier in space. And I expect to see there's a lot of companies already doing isam. I expect to see a tenfold increase in the next decade on doing operations in space and being able to manipulate things in space.

[Maria Varmazas]

Absolutely. Yeah. It's fascinating. I've had a few conversations to that degree here on the show this week, which is just fascinating to hear that that's where things are moving and that we have that capability growing, that folks like yourself are working on making that happen. And just the future is now. So cool.

[Rahul Raghani]

We recently completed a study for the SD on how we can use technologies that we're building to deorbit some of their spacecraft at the end of life because they want to be good stewards of if they're setting up a constellation. You got to make sure that you clean up that space after when you're done.

[Maria Varmazas]

We'll be right back.

[Rahul Raghani]

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[Maria Varmazas]

The 2025American Astronomical Society meeting back in January had oodles of fantastic findings to share, and we are all still digging through them all. So here's another neat one courtesy of two astronomy teams. One at Penn State using the James Webb Space Telescope or jwst, and another at MIT using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or tess. So imagine a planet the size of Neptune orbiting its star in just 9.1 hours. To circle the drain that fast, you have to be awfully close to what's pulling you in. And yeah, K2 22B is right up against its star and so hot that the rocks of this planet aren't just melting, they're vaporizing. So yeah, how hot are we talking? Try 2100 kelvin. This makes K2 22B almost look Comet like with a dust tail streaming behind it, kind of like a dramatic spray of blood after the killing blow in a samurai movie. And I guess I'm not the only one watching a lot of sword fighting films lately, because this is the great description from Nick to say, who is a PhD student at Penn State and one of the lead authors on one of the studies here. And he said this these planets are literally spilling their guts into space for us. And with jwst we finally have the means to study their composition and see what planets orbiting other stars are really made of. And yes, he said these planets because K2 22b as observed by the Penn State team, is not the only planet being ripped apart at the seams and recently studied, the mit team pointed Tess at the Star BD054868. There will be a quiz on that later to check out its disintegrating planet, which is orbiting it every 30 and a half hours. And that planet has two massive dust tails, one in front and one in back, and they cover more than half of the planet's orbit as it evaporates around its star. And oh by the way, it also covers about 1% of that star's light. The MIT researchers estimate that that planet, which is about the size of Our moon is vaporizing about a moon's worth of dust every million years. So, doing the math, that planet has about a million years left, and that is blazingly fast on the cosmic scale. But no, these Death Stars are not nearly as dramatically fast as a Hollywood Darth Vader Death Star. That said, whether you're K2, 22B or Alderaan, the end result is the same. That's it for Tminas for February 26, 2025, brought to you by N2K CyberWire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show [e-mail] we'd love to know what you think of this podcast. You can email [e-mail] or submit the survey in the show Notes. Your feedback ensures we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. N2K strategic workforce intelligence optimizes the value of your biggest investment. Your people. We make you smarter about your team while making your team smarter. N2K Senior Producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Piltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ibin. Peter Kilpe is our publisher and I'm your host, Maria Ramazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. T minus.

[Rahul Raghani]

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