Alice Carou Truth (7:39)

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.

Maria Vermazes (7:54)

Yes, and they have an astronaut going on the Axiom mission coming up. And please remind us where we can find those links.

Alice Carou Truth (8:00)

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.

Maria Vermazes (8:12)

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.

Dave (9:01)

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Maria Vermazes (10:16)

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.

Suzanne Hake (10:29)

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.

Maria Vermazes (10:55)

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?

Suzanne Hake (11:05)

Yeah, so why don't I start with sort of the problem? Like why did we develop. Sure, yeah, sure, sure.

Maria Vermazes (11:11)

If you want.

Suzanne Hake (11:11)

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.

Maria Vermazes (12:34)

Is this globally available in terms of where? Just certain regions or how does that. Where is that working?

Suzanne Hake (12:39)

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.

Maria Vermazes (12:53)

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.

Suzanne Hake (13:14)

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.

Maria Vermazes (15:14)

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?

Suzanne Hake (15:25)

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.

Maria Vermazes (15:51)

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.

Suzanne Hake (16:00)

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?

Maria Vermazes (16:45)

We'll be right back.

Dave (16:54)

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Maria Vermazes (17:34)

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.

Dave (20:24)

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