
Space debris from a rocket reentry reportedly fell to the ground in Poland. True Anomaly expands to Long Beach. Exolaunch opens its France office. And more.
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Maria Varmazas
You're listening to the N2K space network.
Dave
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Maria Varmazas
Today is February 19th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazas and this is T min T minus 20 seconds. Rocket Lab successfully launches its 60th Electron mission four the US and India pledge to accelerate defense technology cooperation, including in space. 3. Exolaunch opens a new location in Toulouse, France. True anomaly opens a 90,000 square foot factory in Long Beach Space debris creates a fireball over Europe in the early hours of the morning and our guest today is Alex Posmikov, CEO and co founder of Mission Space. And I caught up with Alex in Orlando last month to get an update on the space weather company and its move to the United States. Find out more later in the show.
Alex Posmikov
Foreign.
Maria Varmazas
And I am recording live from Zero Trust World in Orlando, Florida today. That's the background noise you're hearing, and we feel a little bit like Chicken Little at the moment, proclaiming that the sky is falling. But the reports of space debris re entering Earth's atmosphere and landing on land are becoming more of a regular occurrence in the early hours of this morning over Europe. Reports of a fireball were shared across social media by users in the uk, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. Cue our go to for space tracking, Jonathan McDowell, aka Planet 4589, who shared that he believed it was the re entry of a Falcon 9 second stage from the Starlink 114 launch. It apparently failed to deorbit on February 2, and according to Jonathan, the second stage re entered over northern Europe last night with entry over the Irish Sea at 3:43 UTC and the reentry track extended to Poland and Ukraine a couple of minutes later. Videos of the fireball can be seen all over social media platforms and a profile called Dutch Space on BSKY went further to show an unconfirmed image of debris found in Poznan, Poland. If confirmed, it looks like a composite overwrapped pressure vessel known as a copv, similar to one that was found in Washington state after another Falcon 9 reentry. The press officer of the Poznan police told local media that employees of a company near Poznan had discovered an unidentified object resembling a tank on their premises. He added that no injuries were reported as a result of this incident. The Polish space agency known as POLSA confirmed that a Falcon 9 rocket had re entered over the country and we will continue to track this story as those reports develop in the coming days. Moving on now, Trinomoly has announced that it's expanding its operations into Southern California with a 90,000 square foot factory in Long Beach. According to the press release, the factory will serve as the company's footprint for new product development and vertical integration and include 20,000 square feet of office space for True Anomaly's growing employee base. True Anomaly says the company's existing factory in Colorado will continue to serve as headquarters and be used for product development, manufacturing and production. We should also add, given the rumors about layoffs affecting so many in the industry, that they are actively hiring across locations and disciplines so links to those opportunities can be found in our show. Notes EXO Launch has officially opened its French location the company took to social media to share that EXO Launch France is officially open expanding our presence in one of the world's most important space hubs. The German headquartered space integration company says that they chose the location to support the region's growing space sector with expertise and execution that satellite operators can count on. Exolant France will be run by Christian Weber, who has previously worked at Telus Alenia Space and the company says Christian will be joined by both existing and new teammates strengthening EXO launches, local presence, moving back to the United States now and the US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Sri Narendra Modi Met in Washington, D.C. last week to discuss cooperation efforts. The two leaders reaffirmed the strength of the India US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership and pledged to accelerate defense technology cooperation to include space. They announced two the US India Trust, which stands for Transforming the Relationship Utilizing Strategic Technology. The initiative aims to catalyze government to government, academia and private sector collaboration to promote application of critical and emerging technologies including space, while encouraging the use of verified technology vendors and ensuring sensitive technologies are protected. And the second is the Indus Innovation Initiative, which is a new innovation bridge modeled after the successful Indus X platform and that will advance US India industry and academic partnerships and foster investments in space and Rocket Lab launched its 60th Electron mission, deploying the next satellite in the Earth Imaging Satellite constellation for Blacksky. The Fasten your Space Belts mission lifted off from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand. It successfully deployed the first Gen 3 satellite by Black sky to a 470 kilometer orbit. The Fasten youn Space Belts mission launched just 10 days after Rocket Lab's previous Electron launch from Launch Complex 1. As the company continues to ramp up its electron launch cadence. And that concludes Today's intel briefing. N2K senior producer Alice Gruth has more on the stories that didn't make the top five today. Alice, what do you got?
Alice Gruth
I have a few extra nuggets for you to chew on today. First is the news that former CNBC reporter Michael Sheets has joined Firefly Aerospace as their new Director of Investor Relations.
Maria Varmazas
Good for them, right?
Alice Gruth
And Blue Origin has announced the next crew going up on their New Shepard suborbital launch. And we've included a Reuters article on President Trump saying that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will not take part in space related government decisions.
Maria Varmazas
And a reminder, where can our listeners find those stories?
Alice Gruth
Links to those stories along with the others mentioned in the headlines can be found in our show notes and@space.m2k.com just click on this episode title.
Maria Varmazas
Thank you Alice Hey T minus Crew. If you find this podcast useful, please do us a favor and share a five star rating and a 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.
Dave
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Maria Varmazas
Our guest today is Alex Pospikov, CEO and co Founder of Mission Space. We caught up at spacecom last month to get an update on the space weather company.
Alex Posmikov
I'm Alex. I'm the CEO and co founder of the Mission space and what we do, we're developing space weather forecasting so we can give hours in advance alerts about if the solar storm going to happen or not.
Dave
Yeah.
Maria Varmazas
And we are in a solar maximum right now, so it's a really exciting time for you.
Alex Posmikov
Like bad news. It's not solar maximum yet.
Maria Varmazas
Wait, I thought we officially were declared maximum now.
Alex Posmikov
No, let's say it's, we're going to the solar maximum.
Maria Varmazas
Okay, fair enough.
Alex Posmikov
But also like other, other, other bad news that NASA thinks that the models that we heard of this 11 years, 11 year cycle before, it's not working properly.
Maria Varmazas
Oh. So we're just going to completely break down that paradigm. I mean, you know, science, that's how, that's nature of science. We learn new things, we adjust. Of course. All right, so you all, last time I spoke to you it was a remote interview. You were in Luxembourg. Yes. And I know there was a lot of developments happening and a lot of things have happened since that are really cool. So walk me through it. So you have moved.
Alex Posmikov
Yes, we moved to Miami. It's like the best place to monitor the sun is the place where you can get sun the most. Yes. And I'm really excited to see like what's going on in this Miami tech ecosystem. It's really, it's really, it's really very well. Yep. Going on second, second big news that we're launching our satellite on board of Transporter 13 on the SpaceX and like fingers crossed, we're counting the days, hope that everything will be very good at this point. And since we're here, we of course are engaging with a lot of customers, trying to educate them, working with associations. Because the biggest issue with the spacebar now that you have different level of understanding of the problematic of the space weather.
Maria Varmazas
Yes.
Alex Posmikov
Even inside the NASA sometimes you can see people, you can say there's like no problem, I don't see any issues with it. And others who just, you know, ringing all the bells they can because it's really thing we must have a lot of attention.
Maria Varmazas
Of course. Yeah. I'm so curious about the conversations that you've had since the last time we spoke. I feel like I'm going back to that a lot, but still, I mean a lot has happened. You've done a lot of development since then and more and more people are understanding how much space weather, as you said, impacts everything, but also especially all of spacecraft and leo and geo, etc. So what are those conversations been like.
Alex Posmikov
Let'S say to get people to tell the real truth is a very big problem because when you speak about space spirit, speak about the risk and that your vulnerability to such risks, most of the satellite operators just want to get silent, want to have silence about it, because they don't know what to answer. They don't know what to do. The same also goes with the airlines. The biggest thing here to explain them. Okay, we're all together. If it's not happening before, it will happen and then somebody will be punished for it because you must be in charge.
Maria Varmazas
You can't say someone didn't plan for that. Of course, of course, of course.
Alex Posmikov
So finally you can, let's say, have some kind of like safe conversations about it.
Maria Varmazas
Yeah.
Alex Posmikov
So what we have now, that finally customers, different industries, they understand what they want to have, because the only thing they want to have is what the impact will be of my operations, what the risks also will be if I'm not doing any measures around it. Can I have go or no go? Because imagine now you don't have any real time data. So if you're planning some operations, you don't know exactly what's happening now.
Maria Varmazas
Yeah. What's the delay? Usually now at least a day or how many days it can be up today.
Alex Posmikov
It can be up to like two or three. Two or three days, it depends. So you.
Maria Varmazas
Yeah, ancient if you're.
Alex Posmikov
Absolutely. But you need to have it now. Imagine if you're like airline, you need to have like every day 16. You have 16,000 polar flights per year. And they are the most heavily affected by the space. Of course, if you, if we speak about like people in space, on moon settlements, it's like the thing you need the most. It's like core. It's like core for the new space economy.
Maria Varmazas
Yeah, of course, yeah.
Alex Posmikov
And now since like space, space, weather, the domain that was heavily dominated and it's still by scientists and people say, okay, but there is like free data on NOAA and how. What's your business, what you will do? The answer is the NOAA is crucial element of our, of, of our space industry. But it's scientific agency with the purpose to do science and all of the space weather, raw data we have now. It was developed for scientific purposes.
Maria Varmazas
Right, Right.
Alex Posmikov
So it was developed for scientists to do their job and if somebody can use it, well. Okay, but it's not the job of the scientist to deliver you the product that you want to have for your set.
Maria Varmazas
Right. It's more than built into the design.
Alex Posmikov
Absolutely, absolutely. And these like huge opportunities we see here. So there are a lot of technical uncertainties. There are a lot of things. So what you have now, you don't have real time data and you don't have understanding what's going on now. And the forecasting area. Why you don't have real time data? Because you need to have multi point measurements with high granularity data. It means you need to have real time constellation of the satellites on Leo. That's what we do. We didn't have it before because 20 years ago it was impossible to have it for like fraction of a cost.
Maria Varmazas
Right? Yeah. Yeah. So I was going to say that. I feel like that brings us to the mission that will be going on Transporter 13. Tell me about what you're sending up there.
Alex Posmikov
So we're sending our space weather sensor.
Maria Varmazas
Yeah, we.
Alex Posmikov
We name it Zor. So Zor in Hebrew means. It means radiance. It also means knowledge. So a lot of, a lot of things. A lot of things around it. A lot of things around it. So we have three sensors. So we have like three instruments on board. On board the F. So we have two spectrometers.
Maria Varmazas
Yep.
Alex Posmikov
And we have one chain of detector for measuring protons.
Maria Varmazas
Yeah.
Alex Posmikov
So it will be the first one who will get the data in the real time from space. Of course we have other parrots that we want to develop in place, but the first one will be only three of this.
Maria Varmazas
Fantastic. So the plan is for a constellation though. That's what you're building for.
Alex Posmikov
We need to have 24 satellites because we want to have one satellite every hour in the polar cusp. In the polar cusps to get the data from them. Plus we also will have different orbital planes because it also will give us additional edge of the data that lies between us.
Maria Varmazas
Last time I spoke to you, I think I said this, but I mean it, you all are doing really exciting things and it's a really interesting niche that you're owning also. I mean it's just one of those things where you tell people about it, like that's really cool. And the need is very apparent. So it's like it makes a lot of sense what you're doing.
Alex Posmikov
So the need is apparent. But of course it's sometimes so hard to convince people we need to go there. But I mean it's the same like with any kind of risk. I just spoke with the guy who is helping risk management of ships.
Maria Varmazas
Yeah, yeah.
Alex Posmikov
And he said people always will tell you it's never happened before, but if it can happen, it will happen.
Maria Varmazas
Yeah, yeah, that's Right. That's right. Well, you are. It's really exciting about transfer to 13. Congratulations. That's really cool. And I really look forward to next time we meet up. I'm sure at a conference like this or remotely there's going to be something else cool.
Alex Posmikov
More and more satellite space.
Maria Varmazas
I know, I know. You're building out your constellation. That's so cool. Well, thanks for dropping by and telling me about all this. Is there anything else you want to share before we close out?
Alex Posmikov
I want to tell you that the issue of the space weather will be with us forever. It's going to be like even more and more important when we'll have our presence on the moon and on Mars. And now the Mars is nearer than we thought. I hope so at least.
Maria Varmazas
Apparently.
Alex Posmikov
Yeah, at least I hope so.
Maria Varmazas
We're all here.
Alex Posmikov
But to be able to get us like for the forecasting space weather on the Mars and on the moon, we need to have something here.
Maria Varmazas
Yes.
Alex Posmikov
So it's not, it's not possible just to say, okay, now we'll develop. Well, I want to say that guys, forget about all of this thing. What we'll do, we'll do space weather forecasting for moon settlements and Mars. But that's not the way how you.
Maria Varmazas
Convince your investors, for example, that's quite a gap.
Alex Posmikov
But to be able, but to be able for us to have moon settlements and Mars missions, finally we need to solve this problem. And to solve solid, we need to have as much resources and we can in this domain. It can be one company, it can be one nation because you can do measurements just like in one place in weather. You can do it in space.
Maria Varmazas
Weather, not so much. It is one planet. So. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you and congratulations on all. Your success may continue. Thank you for speaking with me and dropping by today. I really appreciate.
Alex Posmikov
Thanks for this opportunity.
Maria Varmazas
Oh, thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah. We'll be right back.
Dave
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Maria Varmazas
Welcome back. A fascinating study out of Johns Hopkins University might just have astronauts jumping for joy. There is potentially A new way for them to stay fit during long space missions. Jumping workouts New research conducted on mice found that simply hopping around could actually help prevent cartilage damage. And that is a real concern for astronauts when they're exposed to low gravity on the moon are Mars for long periods. This new JHU study, recently published in the Journal of NPJ Microgravity, showed that mice that had had limited movement for several weeks developed thinner cartilage, which can lead to painful arthritis over time. But when researchers added in some good old jumping exercises for those mice, their cartilage actually became thicker and healthier. To give you some specific stats, mice with reduced movement had a 14% reduction in cartilage thickness, while those in the jump training group had a 26% increase compared to a control group. And the jumping mice also had 110% thicker cartilage than the reduced activity group. And the shin bones in the jumping mice had 15% higher mineral density. And this breakthrough is potentially huge for astronauts, who do usually face muscle and bone loss in space. Jumping somehow not only strengthens bones, but could also be the key to keeping astronaut joints in top shape during extended stays on distant worlds. So it's possible that we could see jumping drills soon added to astronaut training exercises to keep our astronauts pain free and mobile in space. Plus, the findings may help scientists develop new ways to treat cartilage issues back here on Earth, like arthritis. Honestly, I'm taking notes for myself. And that's it for T minus for February 19, 2025, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes@spare.n2k.com and we'd love to know what you think of this podcast. You can email us@space2k.com 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'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 Kilpe is our publisher, and I'm your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.
Alex Posmikov
T minus.
Dave
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T-Minus Space Daily: Episode Summary – "Did a Falcon 9 Second Stage Crash in Poland?"
Release Date: February 19, 2025
Host: Maria Varmazas, N2K Networks
In today's episode of T-Minus Space Daily, host Maria Varmazas delves into a series of pivotal events shaping the global space industry. From rocket launches and international defense collaborations to advancements in space weather forecasting and innovative research in astronaut health, this episode provides a comprehensive overview of the latest developments.
One of the episode's primary focuses is the reported incident involving a SpaceX Falcon 9 second stage.
Incident Details:
Evidence and Impact:
Official Confirmation:
Rocket Lab successfully launched its 60th Electron mission, marking a significant milestone in their operations.
Mission Details:
Future Plans:
In a strategic move, the United States and India have pledged to accelerate their defense technology collaboration, including advancements in space technology.
Key Initiatives:
Leadership Insights:
Trinomoly announced the opening of a new 90,000 square foot factory in Long Beach, California, as part of its strategic expansion.
Facility Purpose:
Employment Opportunities:
Exolaunch officially inaugurated its French location in Toulouse, a pivotal space hub, to bolster their presence in the European space sector.
Leadership Appointment:
Strategic Importance:
A significant portion of the episode features an insightful conversation with Alex Posmikov, CEO and co-founder of Mission Space, a company specializing in space weather forecasting.
Core Focus:
Quote: Alex emphasizes the critical nature of their work, stating, “The issue of space weather will be with us forever. It's going to be even more important when we have our presence on the Moon and Mars” at [17:07].
Relocation to Miami:
Satellite Launch:
Future Plans:
Challenges and Industry Engagement:
Notable Discussion Points:
Alex articulates a forward-looking vision where space weather forecasting becomes integral to not only satellite operations but also to future extraterrestrial missions, ensuring the safety and sustainability of human activities on the Moon and Mars.
Alice Gruth, N2K's senior producer, shares supplementary news that complements the main segments:
Personnel Moves:
Crew Announcements:
Industry Insights:
A fascinating study from Johns Hopkins University was highlighted, presenting a novel approach to maintaining astronaut health during long-duration space missions.
Study Findings:
Implications for Space Travel:
Future Applications:
Today's episode of T-Minus Space Daily offered a rich tapestry of insights into the dynamic and evolving space industry. From addressing the immediate concerns of space debris reentry to pioneering advancements in space weather forecasting and astronaut health, the episode underscores the multifaceted challenges and innovations propelling humanity's ventures into space.
Stay tuned for more updates and in-depth analyses in future episodes, ensuring you remain at the forefront of space intelligence and industry trends.
Jonathan McDowell on Falcon 9 Reentry:
“I believe it was the reentry of a Falcon 9 second stage” – [00:53]
Alex Posmikov on Space Weather Importance:
“The issue of space weather will be with us forever. It's going to be even more important when we have our presence on the Moon and Mars” – [17:07]
Alex on Operational Risks:
“Without real-time data, planning operations becomes highly uncertain” – [13:16]
Listeners interested in exploring today's topics further can visit N2K Networks or check out the show's detailed notes. Feedback and discussions are welcomed via email at space@n2k.com or through the survey link provided in the show notes.
Prepared by N2K Senior Producer Alice Gruth and the T-Minus Crew.