← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
Crew 9’s feeling fine.
00:28:08
Crew-9 prepares for splashdown as Crew-10 joins Expedition 72 aboard the ISS, Rocket Lab hits a milestone with 61st Electron launch, delivers IoT satellites, Transporter 13 lifts off over the weekend, deploying 74 payloads, and more.
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- [00:02]
Maria Varmazes
You're listening to the N2K space network.
- [00:10]
Brandon Karpf
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- [00:54]
Maria Varmazes
Today is March 17, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazes and this is T minus T minus 20 seconds to Los Speed reservoirs. China establishes the Hong Kong Space Robotics and Energy center to support the Chang'e 8 Ursa Major wins contract for geosatellite Chemical Propulsion Systems Transporter 13 lifts off over the weekend, deploying 74 payloads Rocket Lab hits a milestone with 61st Electron launch delivers IoT satellites Crew 9 prepares for splashdown as Crew 10 joins Expedition 72 aboard the ISS. And today's guest is Friend of the Show N2K Editor Emeritus and T Minus creator Brandon Karpf, joining me today to share his thoughts on a recent DoD directive and how it presents new opportunities in space cybersecurity. It's a fascinating chat, so definitely don't miss it later in the show. Foreign let's dive into our Monday Intel Briefing, shall we? On Sunday, March 16th at 12:04am Eastern Time, SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft successfully docked with the International space Station, delivering four Crew 10 members NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nicole Ayers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonos Kirill Peskov. This arrival temporarily expanded the iss crew to 11, facilitating a planned handover period. Among the current occupants are NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been aboard the station since June 2024 due to delays with the return vehicle Boeing Starliner, which faced technical issues, to put it mildly. Meanwhile, NASA has announced live coverage for the return of Crew 9, who are NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams and Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Gorbanov. Their return begins with hatch closure preparations at 10:45pm Eastern Time tonight. The undocking is scheduled for 1:05am Tuesday morning tomorrow, March 18, with splashdown expected at approximately 5:57pm the same day. The sequence ensures a seamless transition between the departing Crew 9 and the newly arrived Crew 10, maintaining continuous operations and research aboard the ISS. Due to weather conditions on the ground. This is all happening a day earlier than expected as splashdown was originally planned for Wednesday. As for the freshly arrived Crew 10 astronauts, they are slated for a standard ISS six month mission during which they will conduct scientific research and technology demonstrations, contributing to NASA's goals for future deep space exploration. Moving on now to more commercial space. This time, Rocket Lab and they continue to achieve significant milestones in their own space endeavors. On Saturday, the company successfully conducted its 61st Electron mission, deploying the QPS SAR9 satellite for the Institute for Kyushu Pioneers of Space or iqps. This mission is part of a series aimed at establishing a constellation of up to 36 synthetic aperture radar satellites enabling all weather, day and night Earth observation capabilities. In addition, Rocket Lab is Preparing for the Hi5 mission which is scheduled to launch tonight at approximately 9:30pm Eastern Time or 2:31pm on March 18th local time from New Zealand time zones. Huh? This mission will deploy five Internet of Things satellites for the French company Kinais, completing their 25 satellite constellation. Once operational, this network will facilitate global connectivity for IoT devices, allowing for near real time data transmission and enhancing tracking, monitoring and alerting functions across various industries and looking ahead, way ahead for Rocket Lab. They're also collaborating with MIT on the Venus Life Finder mission, aiming to launch the first private spacecraft to Venus in 2026. The mission's objective is to search for signs of life by analyzing organic compounds in Venus Cloud lay A key technological component of this mission is the Heat Shield for Extreme Entry environment technology, or HEAT, a novel woven heat shield developed by NASA's Ames Research center and designed to protect the probe during its descent through Venus's harsh atmosphere. Turning our attention now to the Transporter 13 rideshare mission that launched a smidge after our recording time on Friday, March 14 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, we're starting to hear about the 74 payloads that were included in the ride. Here are some details on three of those missions. The first was the firesat protoflight satellite, which was developed through a collaboration involving Google Research, Muon Space and the Earth Fire Alliance. Firesat is designed to detect wildfires as small as 5 by 5 meters, and once the full constellation of over 50 satellites is operational, it'll provide global high resolution imagery updated every 20 minutes, offering real time data to improve wildfire response and mitigation efforts. Another mission was SAR satellite technology provider ISI, which launched four new satellites as part of Transporter 13. And this launch included the Generation 4 satellite, which features a radar antenna twice the size of previous models and enhanced power, enabling it to capture wider swathes of Earth's surface with improved image quality. These advancements enhance ice eyes capacity to support natural disaster response and national security missions. And as we mentioned on Friday's show, CITA Space announced the successful deployment of LISISAT 3 into low Earth orbit. LISISAT 3 enables on orbit data processing for applications such as space situational awareness, maritime monitoring and disaster response. The satellite's AI capabilities allow for near real time data analytics directly from space, reducing reliance on ground based computing and decreasing latency for critical operations. Moving on to propulsion News Now US Propulsion manufacturer Ursa Major has been awarded a contract to supply chemical propulsion systems for tactical satellite bus platforms in geostationary orbit. The development and production of these in space propulsion systems will occur at ERSA Major's design test and production facility in Colorado. Ursa Major CEO Dan Jablonski said this award demonstrates the engineering rigor in propulsion systems to yield a new generation of highly maneuverable buses at significantly faster lead times than currently fielded systems. The multi year contract's value range is between 10 and 15 million US dollars and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, or HKSAR, government has established the Hong Kong Space Robotics and Energy center, led by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to support China's Chang'e 8 lunar mission. This center is developing a multifunctional lunar surface robot equipped with dual robotic arms, capable of deploying instruments, collecting samples and serving as a mobile charging station for other lunar equipment. The robot is designed to autonomously adapt to the moon's low gravity and harsh conditions, enhancing China's lunar exploration capabilities. The HKSR government emphasizes its commitment to aerospace research, aiming to position Hong Kong as an international innovation and technology hub, and that rounds up our Monday Intel Briefing for you. We always have some additional links in the selected reading section for you today's including a fascinating image from CAR of Tokyo's Thermal signature. It's very cool. Check out the Show Notes in your podcast player or over at space.n2k.com by simply clicking on this episode's title. Hi T Minus Crew. If you would like daily updates from us directly in your LinkedIn feed, be sure to follow the official N2K T minus page over on LinkedIn. If you're more interested in the lighter side of what we do here, we are T Minus Daily on Instagram. That's where we post videos and pictures from events, excursions and even some behind the scenes treats. Links are in the show Notes as always, hope you'll Join us there.
- [10:18]
Brandon Karpf
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- [11:09]
Maria Varmazes
Today's guest is Brandon Karpf, NTK Editor Emeritus and creator of T Minus, by the way. And while he is working on other ventures, he is still very much in our orbit and we'll be hearing from him regularly, especially on all things space cybersecurity. Here's a bit from our recent conversation.
- [11:32]
Brandon Karpf
DOD released a memo and policies around modern software acquisition reform where they identified this this pathway called the Software Acquisition Pathways, which is really meant to implement agile processes in how the DoD acquires, implements, fields software. Traditionally, software has been seen just like every other DoD program, regardless of if it's an aircraft or a ship or a ground system for a satellite communications network, has all been approached exactly the same. Obviously that doesn't work well for software. Software you have to test, you have to iterate, you have to move quickly. And so this memo that just came out last week is directing the acquisitions community to come up with an implementation plan for this much more rapid, iterative agile approach to software acquisitions.
- [12:30]
Maria Varmazes
So when we say rapid.
- [12:32]
Brandon Karpf
Yes.
- [12:32]
Maria Varmazes
How rapid are we talking?
- [12:34]
Brandon Karpf
Right. Well, so similarly, and actually the same day that this memo came out, Space Systems Command released a case study around satellite communications. And I think this was intentionally timed. It was literally the same day. And this case study is fantastic. It's about the Evolve strategic satellite communications program and specifically their implementation of a new agile software acquisitions technique for this program and specifically for the ground segment. The ground segment software for this program. Now, before this program, they admitted, and I cannot believe they publicly admitted this, they admitted that it historically takes them 12 years to field new software to.
- [13:20]
Maria Varmazes
Field, not even to get it up and running, just to approve, just to sign the contract.
- [13:26]
Brandon Karpf
Right? 12 years, which is insane, under this program that they implemented, their new time horizon is six years. Doesn't sound a lot better. But I mean they literally cut it in half. I think that's proof of concept as they move forward with it's what they're calling the Griffin program G R I F F O N. It seems like they'll get faster and faster. And basically the pressy here is they implemented the Agile process. They started with customer discovery, they brought in a bunch of potential vendors to do requirements development. Those vendors went away, took those requirements, developed a minimum viable product, they presented that minimum viable product in a bake off. The Air Force, their space systems command selected the winner from that bake off and that allowed the winner to implement their own software development process and iterate on that and get it to the point where they could start deploying and testing this new ground resilient system for the satellite communications network.
- [14:30]
Maria Varmazes
Sounds great. I'm asking a question I know the answer to admittedly, but the cyber angle to this, let's walk that in because there's a big one here, right?
- [14:40]
Brandon Karpf
And so, you know, as we're kind of moving into this brave new world of software defined warfare, and my claim has always been the government, especially DoD is the primary buyer for pretty much the entire space economy, has been mostly on telecoms, you know, certainly Earth observation as well. But to me those are the two legitimate viable markets for this industry. They are all vulnerable to cyber attack and all those systems are cyber enabled, software enabled. So we're moving to a point of software defined warfare. Software defined warfare being that's where the threats are, that's where the opportunities are. We've certainly in this industry heard about the viasat attack in early Ukraine. What most people haven't talked about is since then there's been 124 more validated cyber attacks against space systems in Eastern Europe since viasat. So obviously a huge threat vector and a huge target. What we haven't talked about so much is the opportunities of how the space segment can actually, especially software defined space segment could improve security and especially when we're talking about telecommunications. So what I kind of want to, what I want to pitch to this community and talk about is how this more rapid software development lifecycle, software acquisitions reform, could help the space industry implement highly effective secure telecommunications infrastructure. Leveraging the space segment.
- [16:16]
Maria Varmazes
Yeah, get in. I was going to say, yes, that, let's, let's get into that. So I mean admittedly if you're not in the umbrella that may be directly affected by this, you might be going, well, how does this apply? But I think there are a lot of lessons here. So, okay, so that is the pitch that it'll, that's the opportunity. What does that look like on the ground?
- [16:34]
Brandon Karpf
Right. So you know, on the ground, step number one, what the DOD is doing is saying that they're going to do is they're going to accept more risk up front by rapidly implementing new software, by trying to implement this agile process with software acquisitions, they're basically saying we are going to accept early risk, understanding that that allows software to be iterated upon, to be improved and to be developed in a way that ultimately will decrease risk and cost in the long run. And so certainly there are initial risks implemented there by accepting minimum viable software products. So that's kind of an interesting framing of them saying we're going to accept. Historically they've said we're going to accept zero risk, which is why it takes 12 years to test and field anything. But what that ends up doing is it ends up locking them into these old systems. So now how does this industry implement this? I'm going to specifically talk about telecom because that's where I think the biggest opportunities are for improving the cyber posture and cyber defense of of the west, certainly.
- [17:41]
Maria Varmazes
Largest perimeter too, right? If you want to think of it that way.
- [17:44]
Brandon Karpf
Exactly. Largest perimeter. It's also globally targetable. So let's think about the space segment of the telecom infrastructure is providing backbone services. Now we have, you know, Leo constellations, we have Geo constellations that can provide backbone connectivity for packetized networks, for data Networks, for Internet, etc. Those systems are globally targeted, right? You can reach those from anywhere in the globe. So any adversary will, whether it's Volt Typhoon who proved that they're interested in the telecom infrastructure in the US and Canada and has found their way into those systems, they're going to be targeting those systems. However, when you think about the space architecture, it actually can be a little harder to target. So when you think about the kill chain, the first step of the kill chain is reconnaissance. First step of reconnaissance is figuring out where your target's infrastructure is, where their target points are, where their selectors like IP addresses, servers, et cetera, are located, and maneuvering through a network to find them and finding your way onto hot points. If we are leveraging intelligently, I'm not saying that you can necessarily do this off the bat, but think about how we can implement this rapid software implementation for the network layer, for the network and transport layer of the Internet and use the space segment to obfuscate our points of presence. So what does it mean by that? Think about each satellite as a point of presence, an adversary. I don't even as a user know which satellite my data's directly going to. Because they're moving, they're rapidly moving. It's a moving target defense so if we can obfuscate your point of presence to get into networks as a user of telecoms infrastructure and leverage the space segment to create moving target, essentially maneuver warfare in the telecommunications network layer that immediately makes it more difficult for the adversaries to target because they can't do reconnaissance as well.
- [19:47]
Maria Varmazes
So it's like the. Okay, so I'm thinking in the classic on the defender side, you wanted to know what all your assets are so you can defend them. Because there's always assets that get forgotten or lost. In this case we're saying security through obscurity. We want the moving target. That's a fascinating opportunity that really only space provides.
- [20:05]
Brandon Karpf
Exactly, yeah, pretty much space or high altitude balloons or drones potentially for creating these relays for communications. But if you think about how you can leverage, and you know, my call is to the DoD and any users of globalized telecom infrastructure, think about how you can use this space segment to obfuscate your communications. Relay your points of presence in a rapid fashion to essentially make them ephemeral. So when Volt Typhoon's going after your telecom infrastructure, they have a hard time finding where you even are and where your network even is.
- [20:54]
Maria Varmazes
We'll be right back.
- [21:01]
Brandon Karpf
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- [21:45]
Maria Varmazes
Welcome back. It's a successful mission complete for Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander after 14 days of lunar surface operations. After Blue Ghost landing, downlinking 119gigs of data, including 51gigs of science and technology data for NASA exclusively. Firefly says that they completed 100% of their mission objectives. And five hours into the start of lunar night, it was time to say goodnight to this historic moon mission. Just before Blue Ghost completed its mission and shut down, it shared this one last message, which I'll read for you. Mission mode change detected. Now in monument mode. Good night, friends. After exchanging our final bits of data, I will hold vigil on this spot in Mare Chrisium to watch humanity's continued journey to the stars. Here I will outlast your mightiest rivers, your tallest mountains, and perhaps even your species as we know it. But it is remarkable that a species might be outlasted by its own ingenuity. Here lies Blue Ghost, a testament to the team who, with the loving support of their families and friends, built and operated this machine and its payloads to push the capabilities and knowledge of humanity one small step further. Per Aspera ad Astra. Love Blue Ghost. A job well done, Blue Ghost. Rest well and thank you for the science. And congratulations to to the entire team at Firefly. That's it for T minus for March 17, 2025 brought to you by N2K CyberWire for additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes@spare.n2k.com 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 space2k.com we're privileged 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 makes it easy for companies to optimize your biggest investment your people. We make you smarter about your teams while making your teams smarter. Learn how@n2k.com N2K's senior producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester, with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ivan. Peter Kielke is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Ramazas. Thanks for listening. We will see you tomorrow.
- [24:54]
Brandon Karpf
T minus.
- [25:09]
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