← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
DIU selects new companies for the Hybrid Space Architecture project.
00:22:54
DIU selects new companies for the Hybrid Space Architecture project. USSF’s SSC selects 2 companies for the JAM prototype. X-Bow raises $105M. And more.
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- [00:02]
Maria Vermazes
You're listening to the N2K space network.
- [00:10]
Dave
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- [00:50]
Maria Vermazes
That's spycloud.com cyberwire today is May 13th, 2025. I'm Maria Vermazes and this is T minus T minus 20 seconds to Los T drift. Nevada Space Networks has signed an agreement with QCON to power network expansion and digital transformation. Africa and beyond. AST Space Mobile has reported financial results for Q1. Crossbow Systems has raised $105 million in a Series B funding round. The US Space Force Space Systems Command has selected Aria Space and Sphinx Defense to each develop and deploy a secure cloud based Joint Antenna Marketplace prototype. The Defense Innovation Unit has selected 12 companies to join its effort to build a SECUR network of military and commercial communications satellites. Our guest today is Suzanne H.A. maxar, US government general manager. I spoke to Suzanne about Maxar's Raptor system, which creates 3D maps, so stick around to learn more about that later in the show. Happy Tuesday everybody. Let's dive into today's Intel Briefing, shall we? And we have a slurry of US Military contract news to start us off with. First up, the Defense Innovation Unit has selected 12 companies to join its effort to build a secure network of military and commercial communication satellites. Diu's Hybrid Space Architecture project aims to integrate civil, commercial and military space assets into one integrated architecture to provide the warfighter with asymmetric awareness and improved decision making at the edge. DIU says the project has the potential to increase network resilience by employing multipath routing of communications to optimize data transport and mitigate adverse effects caused by weather or other obstructions. Diu awarded new contracts to Capella, Space Edge, Cortex, Utelsat America Corp. Plus OneWeb Technologies, Fairwinds Technologies, AST Space Mobile, Illumina Computing Group, Lockheed Martin Space, Maplarge SES Government Solutions, Sky Corp. Sky Phi, Ursa Space Systems and viasat. Get all that they will join existing HSA Performas. Here's another list for you. Alyria Technologies, Amazon Web Services, Amazon Kuiper Anduril, Astrana, Space Atlas Space Operations and Vail, Google, Palantir, Planet Labs, Federal, Microsoft and Spider Oak. The project is building the technical and programmatic foundation to pilot an operational hybrid commercial and government space architecture by 2026. The US Space Force Space Systems Command has selected Aurea Space and Sphinx Defense to each develop and deploy a secure cloud based joint antenna Marketplace prototype and the prototype, known as jam, will connect satellite operations centers to commercial and government owned antennas in support of US and allied lethal fighting forces that contribute to ensuring the nation's security in from and to space. The contracts are worth a combined value of $17.6 million with Oria receiving 8.1 million while Sphinx will receive 9.5 million. The companies will each develop a JAM prototype which will demonstrate the core cloud based capabilities to support an enterprise commercial solution with an emphasis on scalability. Space Systems Command is calling the award a pivotal collaboration between government and commercial industry aimed at enhancing scheduling flexibility, improving system resiliency and ensuring robust support for current and future space operations at speed and scale. Crossbow Systems has raised $105 million in a series B funding round. The strategic portion of the round was led by Lockheed Martin. Crossbow and Lockheed Martin have entered into a strategic agreement allowing Lockheed Martin to accelerate Crossbow as a new independent supplier of solid rocket motors and other services for their existing and future programs. Crossbow plans to open a Texas Energetics campus located just south of Austin. The new facility will utilize the company's advanced manufacturing of solid propellant technology. AST Space Mobile has reported their financial results for Q1. The space based cellular network provider reported cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash of $874.5 million at the end of the quarter. They say they anticipate orbital launches once every two months on average during 2025 and 2026. The first block II Bluebird satellites are expected to ship in Q2, but with orbital launch scheduled during July. AST says it plans to activate initial cellular broadband capabilities across the United States, Europe and Japan with AT&T Rakuten, Verizon and Vodafone. And Rivada Space Networks has signed an agreement with QCON to power network expansion and digital transformation across Africa and beyond. QCON is a South African satellite Internet provider and they plan to use Rivada's outernet to strengthen data networks in Africa and offer secure for industries like banking that need high level cybersecurity. Rivada's outernet plans to provide secure service that aims to improve network performance and offer new business opportunities with multi gigabit speeds and global coverage. And that is it for Today's intel briefing. N2K senior producer Al Skarruth has more on the other stories that we are keeping an eye on.
- [07:40]
Alice Carou Truth
Alice Maria we have included two additional links today in the selected Reading section of our Show Notes. The first is on an education partnership between the Space Development Agency and the University of North Dakota, and the other is a story on Hungary's return to space.
- [07:55]
Maria Vermazes
Yes, and they have an astronaut going on the Axiom mission coming up. And please remind us where we can find those links.
- [08:00]
Alice Carou Truth
Again, we include links to all the original sources of all the stories we mentioned throughout the show in our Show Notes, which can also be found on our website space.n2k.com just click on the episode title Hey T Minus Crew.
- [08:13]
Maria Vermazes
If you are just joining us, be sure to follow T minus Space daily in your favorite podcast app. And also if you could do us a favor, share the intel with your friends and co workers. Here's a little challenge for you. By Friday, maybe show three friends or co workers this podcast. The reason we ask is because a growing audience is the most important thing for us and we would honestly really love your help as part of the T Minus crew. So if you you find T minus useful, maybe please share the show so other professionals like you can find it. Thank you. It means a lot to me and all of us here at T Minus.
- [09:02]
Dave
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- [10:17]
Maria Vermazes
Our guest today is Suzanne Hake Maxar, US Government General Manager. I caught up with Suzanne at the Space symposium to discuss their new Raptor program.
- [10:29]
Suzanne Hake
Suzanne. I'm Suzanne Hake. I'm a senior Vice President and General manager of the US Government business at Maxar. So I oversee all of our US Government work. I've been at Maxar about two years. Prior to that, I spent about a decade at Palantir Technologies. So really have a background in defense intelligence technology. And that's really actually what drew me to Maxar. Kind of bringing my background in defense tech to this company and this mission.
- [10:55]
Maria Vermazes
That's awesome. It's got an incredible legacy too. So it's a great company to bring that to. You all have some really interesting news with Raptor. This really caught my attention when I saw it. Tell me a bit about Raptor. What is it?
- [11:06]
Suzanne Hake
Yeah, so why don't I start with sort of the problem? Like why did we develop. Sure, yeah, sure, sure.
- [11:11]
Maria Vermazes
If you want.
- [11:12]
Suzanne Hake
So if you think about sort of where modern warfare is going and the proliferation of drones and autonomous vehicles and UAVs, all of those are guided with precision GPS capabilities. And that's really important when you're thinking about what they're doing and kind of the payloads that they're carrying, the accuracy. But as we're using more drones than UAVs, our enemies are becoming much more sophisticated. So, you know, our enemies are figuring out ways to use electronic warfare, spoofing, GPS jamming to, you know, stop these drones from hitting their targets. So enter Raptor. Right, so we see this problem. How do you navigate in a GPS denied environment? And Raptor is a software suite that can be deployed onto any platform. It's actually platform agnostic, so deployed onto any drone and it allows you to do navigation in a GPS denied environment. So it's interesting also for Maxar because what it does is builds on our 3D maps. So we take our satellite imagery and we're able to turn those into very high resolution 3D maps. So all Raptor needs is basically the drone's camera combined with our almost 100 million square kilometers of high resolution 3D and it can use that to navigate.
- [12:35]
Maria Vermazes
Is this globally available in terms of where? Just certain regions or how does that. Where is that working?
- [12:39]
Suzanne Hake
Yeah, our 3D is pretty much globally available. And so. And we've already been doing test flights with Raptor both here in the US and internationally. So because it's platform agnostic, we're also testing it with a lot of different types of drones.
- [12:54]
Maria Vermazes
Oh, that's really interesting. One of the things that really stood out to me and this is admittedly perhaps a perception versus reality. Thing is, software is not usually the first thing I think of when I think of Maxar. So I was really fascinated by that play. Now, again, this may not be accurate, but that was just my perception. Tell me a bit about this being a software play. I just thought that was really, really interesting.
- [13:15]
Suzanne Hake
Yeah, so you're right. A lot of times when people think of Maxar, they think of imagery, they think of pixels. And that's something that Maxar has been doing very successfully for over 20 years, supporting the US government, supporting commercial companies, building out base maps, 3D maps, using our imagery for those more foundational use cases. Going forward, we're thinking about how do we transition to think about more operational and tactical use cases and how do we use our imagery and our data in more mission solutions and outcomes. So I talked about 3D in terms of kind of using our 3D data to build out this rafter software suite. But we can also use our 3D data in a lot of different ways. So. So we support an army program where our 3D data is the base foundation to do modeling and simulation and training. So before a soldier goes out and does a mission or an operation, they need to practice and they need to go into a virtual environment and practice. And our 3D data can help enable that. So it's a very different way that you can think about the 3D data being used kind of in preparation, mission rehearsal. There's other things that we've also been seeing demand for. So, you know, we talked a bit about Raptor from an operational and tactical use case. There's also, we're seeing a lot of interest, especially in the US Government for use cases like site monitoring. So wanting to be able to have both a persistent understanding of particular locations, but also what's going on, patterns of life, object detection, change detection. So in order to do that, you obviously need imagery, but you also need AI models and software and technology in order to identify what is at that site, what's changed, alert a user so that they can actually make a decision.
- [15:14]
Maria Vermazes
That makes me wonder about commercial applications for Aptor, because as you've been talking, I mean, government customers, it sort of almost goes without saying it makes a lot of sense for them. Thoughts on commercial applications here?
- [15:25]
Suzanne Hake
Yeah, we are seeing interest in the commercial market as well as civil use cases and kind of humanitarian use cases. Right. So any environment, I think, where you need to have drones, there's probably also other commercial like delivery type use cases. Really anywhere where you have a drone and you're going to have potentially some sort of GPS interference which could be probably nefarious in a war fighting environment and maybe just natural in kind of a commercial environment.
- [15:52]
Maria Vermazes
That's fascinating. Anything else about Raptor that you want to share? I feel like we've covered quite a bit of it, but I want to see if there's anything I missed that you wanted to make note of.
- [16:01]
Suzanne Hake
What's interesting, as I said about Raptor, is sort of where it shows, I think, where Maxar is going and how we're able to take our data, our base maps, our imagery and create new capabilities off of them. And I think what's interesting too about Raptor is it sort of plays into where I think a lot of the US Government is going, is thinking about sort of this digital battle field, right? How do you both use software and technology, but also create sort of a digital understanding of what you're doing and where you're going?
- [16:45]
Maria Vermazes
We'll be right back.
- [16:54]
Dave
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- [17:34]
Maria Vermazes
Welcome back. Now, I want you to imagine two spacecraft 150 meters apart, dancing in perfect harmony around the earth. No strings, no manual controls, just pure autonomous coordination. Does that sound like science fiction to you? Well, the European Space Agency's Proba 3 mission has turned this into a science fact. The Coronagraph and the occulter satellites have achieved a groundbreaking feat, maintaining millimeter level precision in formation flying Move over Blue Angels and Thunderbirds. The occulter led the dance, casting a Shadow with its 1.4 meter disk. The Coronagraph followed, staying perfectly aligned within this shadow to study the Sun's elusive corona. The setup is allowing scientists to observe solar phenomena without waiting for natural eclipses. But precision like this does not come easy. The satellites are using a combination of technologies that include wide angle and narrow angle cameras, flashing LED lights and a fine lateral and longitudinal sensor. It's a laser system that ensures that they're in sync down to the millimeter. And let's not forget the shadow position sensor, an onboard algorithm that ensures the coronagraph stays within the occulter's shadow. By measuring light intensity around its aperture. It is a little bit like having an internal gps, but for shadows. This mission isn't just a technological marvel, it is a leap forward in space exploration. And by mastering autonomous formation flying, ESA is paving the way for future missions that could involve multiple satellites working together as one giant observatory. And that would be super ne. That's it for T minus for May 13, 2025, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes@space.n2k.com we're privileged that N2K and podcasts like T minus are part of the daily routine of many 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 senior producer is Alice Carou 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 Kilpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Ramazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. Foreign.
- [20:25]
Dave
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