← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
Beam me up, power!
00:28:47
NASA’s Northrop Grumman CRS-23 mission docks with the ISS. Axiom plans a space data center. NTT and Mitsubishi test power beaming. And more.
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You're listening to the N2K space network.
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And now a word from our sponsor. ThreatLocker, the powerful zero trust enterprise solution that stops ransomware in its tracks. Allow Listing is a deny by default software that makes application control simple and fast. Ring Fencing is an application containment strategy ensuring apps can only access the files, registry key keys, network resources and other applications they truly need to function. Shut out cybercriminals with world class endpoint protection from Threat LOCKER.
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Today is September 18th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis and this is T minus.
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T minus 20 seconds.
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Go for deploy. Ursa Major has been awarded a $34.9 million contract from an undisclosed U.S. aerospace and defense company. The Hubble network has raised $70 million in series B funding. NTT, in collaboration with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group, has successfully demonstrated the world's most efficient optical wireless power transmission under atmospheric Axiom Space and spacebuilt have formed a multi organization collaboration to bring optically interconnected Orbital Data center infrastructure to the ISS in 2027. One NASA's Northrop Grumman CRS 23 mission to the International Space Station has now docked with the orbiting lab. Our guest today is Mary Glashkov, CEO at Mission Space. We're going to be discussing their new partnerships and the latest in space weather monitoring. We'll also have updates from World Space Business Week from our partners at Spacewatch Global, so stick around for more on that later in our show. Thank you for joining me on this lovely Thursday. Let's get started. We're kicking off today's show with a collective sigh of relief after issues with propulsion timings delaying the arrival of NASA's Northrop Grumman CRS 23 mission to the International Space Station. It has now docked with the orbiting lab. The spacecraft arrived at the ISS this morning, Thursday, September 18th at 7:24am Eastern Time. The mission was launched four days ago from Florida, carrying more than 11,000 pounds of scientific investigations and cargo to support research on the orbiting laboratory. NASA astronauts Jonny Kim and Zena Cardman captured the Cygnus XL spacecraft using the International Space Station's Canadarm2 robotic arm. We're sure everyone involved is glad that they were able to remedy the issue so quickly and get the spacecraft to the station safely. And speaking of the iss, Axiom Space and spacebuilt have formed a multi organization collaboration to bring optically interconnected Orbital Data center infrastructure to the orbiting lab in 2027. The Axiom Orbital Data center, or ODC node on the International Space Station will be known as AX ODC Node ISS and it is being developed under a collaboration agreement with spacebuilt and supported with an optical communication terminal by Skylum and hardware by Fison Electronics and Microchip Technology. Axiom says it will establish an optically interconnected high performance ODC node aboard the station, enabling satellites, other spacecraft in low earth orbit and astronauts and researchers to store and process data and run artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads and other cloud computing applications. The companies say that this cooperation represents the future of ODC infrastructure and orbital cloud services in leo. Terrestrial cloud infrastructure is interconnected and accessible anywhere in the world and supported by an ecosystem of cloud service providers, data center builders, computing hardware vendors and fiber cable network providers. Orbital cloud infrastructure will continue to evolve as an ecosystem of space platform providers, LEO hardened computing hardware vendors and optical communications relays. Axiom Space believes that there is tremendous opportunity for companies around the world to collaborate and unlock the future of space based cloud and and AI and this new project builds upon Axiom's achievement of launching the Axiom Data Center Unit 1 to the Space station just last month and is in alignment with the announcement in April by Axiom Space to launch AXODC nodes 1 and 2 net late 2025.
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And if that isn't enough of an.
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Initiative to keep Axiom busy, we're still on Axiom. By the way, they have also announced the launch of of the Axiom Space University alliance and the alliance is a global initiative designed to elevate scientific opportunities in microgravity research, technology development, R and D and commercial innovation in LEO. They have already lined up 15 partners across the United States, Europe and Australia and are inviting others to join this movement and if you are interested, more details can be found by following the link in our show notes.
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Let's head on over for non Axiom related news next. And let's go to Japan now and.
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NTT in collaboration with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group, has successfully demonstrated the world's most efficient optical wireless power transmission under atmospheric interference. The demonstration received 152 watts of electric power over 1 km for an efficiency rate of 15%. The result advances the company's development of technologies to accurately deliver power over long distances where cables cannot be installed or used, such as disaster stricken areas. Or most importantly for you dear listeners, for space based power systems. Yes, this is just one step in a bigger plan by the companies to build on their research and development to further improve power supply efficiency with improved material compatibility and the use of laser light sources with higher power. Yes indeed, power beaming is no longer sci fi and we are all here for it. The Hubble Network has raised $70 million in Series B funding and no, just a reminder, we are not talking about the incredible space telescope that is forever my favorite in my heart. We are talking about the satellite IoT company that shares the name. The new capital brings the company's total funding to $100 million since its founding in 2021. The Hubble Network says that their long term vision is to build a global satellite network that enables affordable, low power, ubiquitous connectivity for billions of devices, unlocking a new era of IoT at planetary scale. The Hubble Network says it'll use the new funding to expand their satellite constellation and power enterprise deployments across logistics, infrastructure, defense and consumer IoT. ERSA major has been awarded a $34.9 million contract from an undisclosed US Aerospace and Defense company. Through this new contract, Ursa Major will deliver Draper Engines and associated Services. The engine manufacturing company says the effort will accelerate development, production and deployment of Draper for critical national security applications in space and ultimately validate the engine's performance and flexibility under operational conditions. This award follows a $28.6 million contract from the U.S. air Force Research Laboratory to demonstrate the Draper Engine in flight by the end of this calendar year. And that wraps up today's top five stories for you. But eagerly awaiting in the wings as always, is my friend and producer N2K senior producer Alice Carouse with the other stories making the headlines today. Alice, what do you have?
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Just three additional stories worth mentioning today. Maria Scout Space has been awarded an AFWorks Cibber Phase 2 contract. Hawkeye 360's Cluster 12 have achieved full operational capabilities and we've included a link to a South China Post article on the tit for tat going on between the US and Chinese satellites spying on each other.
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Greg Gillinger from Integrity ISR I am sure will have a lot more on that in his update with us later this month. And please Alice, remind us where we can learn more about all of these stories.
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Maria we include links to all the original sources of all the stories mentioned throughout the show in the Selected Reading section of our show notes. Those links can also be found on our episode page on our website space.m2k.com.
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It/Crew this week thanks to our partners at Spacewatch Global, we've been bringing you updates from the World Space Business Week show floor in Paris. And you know we would love to hear what you think. Want to hear more segments like this. Are there other shows you would like us to cover, or is there something else entirely? Please send us your feedback with our Listener Survey link is in the show Notes for you. We would greatly appreciate it. And I will be talking with Torsten Kroening next week about his takeaways from World Space Business Week, so let me know if there's something you would like me to ask him. Send those questions to space2k.com and you might just hear me ask your question on the show. And thanks.
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Our guest today is Mary Glazkova, CEO at Mission Space. They've recently announced a series of new partnerships, including today's announcement with Star Cloud. I started our chat by asking Mary to give us an update on the space weather monitoring company.
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Right. So we're building the constellation of 24 satellites, so you have at least one of them on the polar region. Those are regions that are highly affected by solar flares. And the first payload was launched in March this year. So we have like five, six months of flight heritage. This first payload was focused on radiation and next generation of instruments. We're also going to track plasma density, neutral density for satellites to better calculate the drag. And we're also of course looking into the Mars missions to track the dust and radiation and et cetera, et cetera. And we received an award for this current payload. It's a global tech award in space tech and we're very pleased.
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Well, congratulations. Yeah, that's great.
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That's really wonderful. I was thinking also of the partnership that you all announced with StarCloud, because that also sort of comes with a.
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Lot of really interesting innovations that you all are working on.
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Is there anything that you can add.
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About the StarCloud announcement?
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Also, StarCloud is one of the, let's say, interesting startups. That's my opinion. But this is something that really gives a lot of people their attention on that topic of building AI orbital data centers. And this is what Circloud is doing and we're very pleased to partner with them. They are one of the first who really sees and understands the problem of radiation because charged particles, they can damage the nodes and this is how you lose the information. So what we're going to do, we're going to provide them the high resolution space weather information and analytics. And this crucial data will enable them to dynamically optimize power and formal management, ensuring uninterrupted performance even during solar storms.
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That sounds like it aligns really well with your company's goals overall in terms of you all are doing really incredible.
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Just it's really interesting things regarding space weather and it always impresses me how much we still don't know about what we generally call space weather and how much it does affect especially these proliferated LEO satellites and constellations and there's so.
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Much we just don't know. And that you all are really figuring.
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A lot of this out is just so fascinating.
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Yeah, maybe you read it was a recent book by Space Capital and they, they talk a lot about terrestrial weather like how it affects every day, every, every operation of every business. It affects everything. GPS related communications, polar flight routes and of course of course low earth orbit and deep space. So I think it's the right time to start talking about and with all those new rockets and plans to get back on the moon and go further to Mars, it's super important to understand what's going on there.
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Absolutely, I completely agree. And you all are at a really fascinating place in an intersection of the advancements of technology and also where all of these space missions really need the.
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Insights that you'll provide.
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I'm curious about the sort of the.
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Long term vision for your company also.
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I imagine learning more about what we're, what's going on in space weather is, is obviously the sort of the top line but I'm just curious about sort of, you know, your five, ten year vision.
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I like to say that we're going to be like hyper NOAA because you know NOAA's mission, they have a maybe 10 missions that's still operational but some of them passed you the age and a lot of decommissioned and no longer operational missions and the gap is real. So we believe first of all that our approach of building super small instruments will allow us to deploy the Constellation because it's cheap to launch, its easy to replace if something goes wrong. And the more data points you have, the better picture you have and yeah, the more information is always better.
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That's fantastic. Yeah, I mean and certainly as I said it's very, very Needed especially as more missions are going and proliferating in leo. So it makes a lot of sense.
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Yeah, we're not trying to take that piece of cake from Noah. We, we are in talks with noaa. They have a wonderful program, it's called data buyouts. And we're also in talks with NASA and they have some missions that they like. They, they see how we can work together because they are more focused on low energy instruments. And this is like a nice cooperation with our instruments.
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That's, it makes a lot of sense.
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Honestly. We, especially when we're talking about scientific understanding, cooperation really is so crucial. I absolutely, completely understand. I wanted to ask also about, I feel like this is an obligatory question that everyone has to ask about AI nowadays. I'm just so curious about how this all fits in with the obligatory AI question.
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It's a very good question. So the good thing about the space, it's still like a common ground. So those who collect the data, they own the data. And what about like the AI models? Like there are a lot of companies that work on AI and the thing is that those models that they are built on historical data.
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Yeah.
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And that, and they like fail from 6 to 12 hours so they can't predict any longer. And those who say that they can, this just an extrapolation and it's that the probability of the false alarm is very high. And this is what is happening nowadays is that the chances of false alarms are so high that people tend to just ignore them. This is kind of like dangerous. This is why we think the real data is king.
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And.
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So talking about that, we signed a lot of intent with LeoLabs just like a few weeks ago and there was an interesting paper from LeoLabs from I think the beginning of this year and they, they said that as of February of 2024 there, there are several, hundreds of unknown objects in the catalog and that the number of active satellites anticipated to grow from 10,000 to like 60,000 by 2030. And it's becoming increasingly, increasingly crucial to employ rapid, accurate models and methods of tracking the objects. And of course the neutral density and other parameters are very crucial for understanding what's going on.
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Yeah, it sounds like sort of the data set that maybe the large language models would need to be more predictably correct are just not there yet. So yeah, if I'm summarizing that correctly.
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It'S good now it's either going to happen or it's not going to happen. It's like we see a coronal mass ejection, but if it's going to hit the Earth, maybe when? Maybe in two days, maybe in three. This works.
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Is it a G1 or a G5? We don't know.
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We don't know.
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We have no idea.
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Something in between.
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Yeah, yeah, we're just not there yet. That's totally fair and honestly a very realistic answer also which as you said.
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Data truly is king.
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So we'll keep our focus there. That makes a lot of sense.
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Yeah, AI is good, but it's really. I remember we talked to someone from the commercial space stations and I asked them how are you going to track the, like the radiation, how you're going to shield from the radiation? And they told me that we're going to use the historic data from iss. I was like, that's interesting because Titanic also used historic data and it's didn't go well.
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Wow, that is, is the most amazing response to that. I am saving that to use myself because that is incredible. I have to say I love it.
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People tend to forget, you know, bad things and it was okay, it's flame somehow so we're gonna play somehow too. So it's just like one, one event, that's it. And you're done.
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We will be right back.
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Welcome back. I will hand you over now to Torsten Kroenig and Yvette Gonzalez who are our partners at Spacewatch Global. With the latest from World Space Business Week in Paris.
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Hello Maria. And hello from Paris. The Earth observation sector is undergoing a tectonic transformation. One that is not just technological, but structural, strategic and geopolitical. And as Anne Katrine de Jen of Nova Space outlined during the opening sessions of the Summit on Earth observation businesses 2025 at the World Space Business Week's day number four in Paris, we are witnessing the acceleration of Earth observation into the very heart of national security, economic strategy and digital transformation. The Earth observation market is increasingly dictated by end user demands not just from government agencies, but also from institutional investors, insurers and regulators. Security and defense remain the dominant revenue drivers in this dual use reality the lines between commercial and military Earth observation systems continue to blur. The commercial Earth observations segment is poised to double its market share from 6 to 12% by 2034. Its growth will be driven by heavier small cell platforms with enhanced performance multi sensor payloads combining hyperspectral Sol and GHG sensors Orbital diversification including new LEO regimes like Hue and Sun synchronous twilight orbits rapid low cost launch options from SpaceX, Chinese light launchers and emerging global providers. This pivot to higher performance platforms reflects growing demand from governments and defense customers who need more agile and powerful Earth observation capabilities without relying sorely on sovereign state owned assets. Defence remains the cornerstone of Earth observation market growth. By 2034, defense related earth observations data and services are expected to account for for 3.1 billion annually, making up 40 to 50% of the total Earth observation value chain. This growth is driven by demand for ultra high resolution imagery sub 30 cm high revisit rates enabling real time tactical awareness advanced spectral bands for multi domain sensing Increasing willingness of military users to outsource value added services rather than just raw data. Perhaps most notably, governments are now pushing for space sovereignty, not just data sovereignty. Over to you Yvette.
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Thank you Torsten. With today's focus on Earth observation we had insights from leading remote sensing industry leaders. Here are a few key takeaways for the US Government side There's going to be more aggressive acquisition models which favor commercial solutions that can leverage existing capabilities faster and deploy demonstrable capabilities. That's where projected investments will go long term. There will be an increase in spending for AI and a commercial solution, so operators will continue to work with Congress to shape the long term perspective. There is a triangle between OpenAI being just within reach and probably within the next two years having a difficult direction for those at large such as Google and Gemini. But there are real world models that will need real world data. You can't respond to insurance claims or disaster response without real data. So it's an extraordinary time for AI and for geospatial companies. But they will be monitoring all of these forward looking illegal activities across the world and at greater scale and that will call upon more appropriate training models to meet that need. Where they are on this journey no one knows for certain and it's only the beginning. So everyone will continue to monitor. That's all from here today. Back to you Maria.
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And that's T Minus brought to you by N2K CyberWire what do you think about T minus Space Daily? We would love to know. Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey link in the show notes and thank you for helping us continue to improve our show. We are 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 ideas shaping the future of secure innovation. Learn how@n2k.com N2K senior producer is Alice Carruthers Truth 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 Kilby is our publisher and I am your host Maria Varmazes. Thank you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. T minus.
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Foreign.
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