← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
ESA BOOST! for launch.
00:23:49
ESA extends funding for four launch companies. Latitude signs a multi-launch agreement with ATMOS. D-Orbit signs deals with Impulso and Morpheus. And more.
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- [00:02]
Maria Varmazas
You're listening to the N2K space network.
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- [00:48]
Maria Varmazas
We're quite accustomed to large space expos here in the United States. And if you've attended space symposium over the last 10 years, then you definitely know what I mean. But right now all the space conference action seems to be focused on Europe. It was the IAC in Milan last month and today saw the opening of the Space Tech Expo Europe in Bremen, Germany. We're all getting a little bit of FOMO and wondering if the German Christmas markets are already up. T minus 20 seconds to Los. My voice is connecting from a satellite. Today is November 19th, 2024. I'm Maria Varmazas and this is T. ESA awards contract extensions with four companies. Latitude signs a multi launch agreement with Atmos, Deorbit signs contracts with Impulso and Morpheus. And our guest today is Lauren Andrade, Director of Marketing and Communications for the Beyond Earth Institute. We'll be talking about Beyond Earth Leadership Council and the research that they've conducted on the cislunar economy. Happy Tuesday everybody. Let's get into it. So the news coming out of Europe's biggest space conference has been dropping all morning. And we're kicking off today's briefing with the announcement that the European Space Agency is extending its booty program support for four European launch companies. And those would be High Impulse, Isar Aerospace, Orbix and Rocket factory Augsburg, also known as RFA, which will receive each a share of over 44 million euros. High impulse, Isar Rocket factory Augsburg received initial support from ESA's Boost program in May 2020 as part of the DLR microlauncher competition. Orbex later received funding through the program in March 2021. And with this new round, Orbex will receive an additional 5.6 million euros. ISAR Aerospace, 15 million euros. And Rocket Factory Augsburg and High Impulse will each receive 11.8 million euros. According to ESA, the 44.2 million euros in funding extensions are aimed at alleviating the pressure in the months before an inaugural flight, when costs are high and the potential to generate revenue is limited. And now for a roundup of new contracts announced in Bremen. French launch company Latitude has signed a multi launch agreement with German space logistics company Atmos to deliver the company's Phoenix reentry vehicles into very low Earth orbit. Atmos had contracted Latitude to provide a minimum of five dedicated launches per year between 2028 and 2032. Latitude is working towards the maiden flight of its two stage Zephyr Rocket which is scheduled to be launched towards the end of 2025. The first commercial flight will follow in 2026 with the French space agency CNES signed on as the rocket's first customer. Impulso Space USA has signed a multi mission launch services contract with Deorbit. The agreement also includes multiple satellite launches as part of upcoming SpaceX transporter rideshare missions, with Impulso Space providing mission management services including all logistical and technical support from their facility in Florida. And another company working with Deorbit is Morpheus Space and the companies are collaborating to conduct an in orbit demonstration go to mission on Deorbit's Ion Satellite Carrier Orbital Transfer Vehicle. The Ion spacecraft is modular and capable of performing multiple mission objectives at once depending on the configuration. The in orbit demonstration mission is scheduled for early 2025. Arianespace has signed a launch contract with ExoTrail for the first GEO mission of ExoTrail's Space Van vehicle. The Space Van is ExoTrail's Orbital Transfer Vehicle and for this mission it'll be placed in Geostationary transfer orbit or GTO in the second half of 2026. And the first GTO to geo mission for the Space Van will demonstrate a new capacity to bring small satellites up to the Geostationary ARK Space Van and now onto other space news because there's still a lot of it. Congratulations to Dawn Aerospace which made history on November 12th with the successful supersonic flight of its Mark 2 Aurora rocket powered aircraft, making it one of the fastest privately developed aircraft on the planet. Dawn Hypersonics achieved the milestone with the Aurora plane surpassing the speed of sound for the very first time, reaching Mach 1.1 and climbing to an altitude of 82,500ft. The flight, conducted from New Zealand's Glen Tanner Aerodrome exceeded its test target speeds and altitude of Mach 1.05 and 75,000ft. It is the first time a civil aircraft has flown supersonic since the Concorde. Wow. Really wow. Dang. Dawn says this achievement signifies a major step towards operational hypersonic travel and daily space access, establishing rocket powered aircraft as a new class of ultra high performance vehicles. Aerovironment and Blue Halo have announced the execution of a definitive agreement under which AV or aerovironment will acquire Bluehalo in an all stock transaction with an enterprise value of approximately $4.1 billion. The companies say the merger will make AV a more diversified global leader in all domain defense technologies. The combined company will bring together complementary capabilities to offer a comprehensive portfolio of high growth franchises powered by technology and focused on addressing the most important priorities and needs of the US and allies around the globe. Jacobs have released their financial results for the fiscal fourth quarter and fiscal year ended September 27, 2024. The professional services firm reported revenue of $3 billion for the year, a 4.4% increase year over year during the quarter. Jacobs closed the transaction involving the company's critical mission solutions and cyber and intelligence businesses, merging those business units with Momentum Parent holdings to create a new spinoff called simply Momentum holdings. And around the time that today's program will be published, I, along with just about every other space fan from around the world, plan to be watching Starship's sixth test flight from Boca Chica, Texas. At the time of recording, all systems and weather conditions are looking good for the flight. The launch is targeted for 4pm Central Time, so if you're listening to this as we're publishing, go and find a screen to stream it right now and we'll be bringing you updates about the launch on tomorrow's show. And NASA has announced a new leadership appointment. Clayton P. Turner will serve as the Associate Administrator of the Space Technology Mission Directorate at the Agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. you can read about that appointment and find out more about all of the other stories I've mentioned by following the links in our show notes. There. You will also find the Aerospace Corporation's latest paper on anything else but my favorite Cybersecurity on Orbit. Hey T Minus crew. If you're just joining us, be sure to follow T Minus Space Daily in your favorite podcast app. Also, if you can do us a favor, share the intel with your friends and co workers. Here's a little challenge for you. By Friday, please show three friends or coworkers this podcast. That's because a growing audience is the most important thing for us and we would love your help as part of the T Minus crew. So if you find T Minus useful.
- [09:08]
Lauren Andrade
And we really hope you do, please.
- [09:10]
Maria Varmazas
Share the show so other professionals just like you can find it. Thanks so much for your support everybody. It means a lot to me and all of us here at T Minus.
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Sponsor Voice
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- [10:15]
Maria Varmazas
Last week I attended the Beyond Earth symposium in Washington D.C. and we'll be bringing you some of the chats that I captured during the event over the next few days. And today we'll start with Lauren Andrade, Director of Marketing and Communications for the Beyond Earth Institute.
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Lauren Andrade
Hi everyone. My name is Lauren Andrade. I am the Director of Marketing and Communications for the Beyond Earth Institute. I am an attorney by trade and recently got my Master's of Law in air and space law.
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Maria Varmazas
Congrats.
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Lauren Andrade
And I also work for an airspace consulting firm here in Washington, D.C. so wear a few different hats.
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Maria Varmazas
That's a lot of hats. That's amazing. In your Beyond Earth capacity. It sounds really amazing to say that out loud in that capacity. You have been very busy lately.
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Lauren Andrade
I have.
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Maria Varmazas
You gave an amazing presentation. I'm just hats off to you. That is a ton of work that you did.
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Lauren Andrade
Thank you.
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Maria Varmazas
I'm giving it away a little bit. Tell me a bit about this incredible compendium that you've just released.
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Lauren Andrade
Yeah. So the Beyond Earth has Institute has this really cool thing called the Leadership Council where we bring together public and private sector experts and we divide them into these working groups. And every year we sit down and we say, hey, do these working groups work? Are they topics that we want? And for this year, we actually had five different topics. So one was focused on the cislunar economy, one on commercial space stations, one on reliability, health and safety. So really looking at the human factor of space travel, large scale habitats, and then advanced financing and economics, why those topic areas?
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Maria Varmazas
I mean, they're all awesome, but how did you pick those? That's amazing.
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Lauren Andrade
You know, all but large scale habitats were topics that have carried through all of the Beyond Earth symposiums as topics that are both timely, but also things that we can actually develop actionable and real tangible recommendations for. There's so many space topics that you can theorize on and that need to be theorized on. But as a space policy think tank, our goal is to really say, here are some recommendations that we have brought people together in a room to talk about and figure out what is a path forward.
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Maria Varmazas
So can we boil down all of that into, so what are the recommendations? I'M sure there's a lot in there, but I mean, those are all very incredible topic areas. And I mean, how does one take all of that, like cislunar economy? Where did you all land on that?
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Lauren Andrade
What I would say and what I would urge you all to actually read them. They're bulky, they're dense. But I think what they all really boil down to is that there needs to be a really symbiotic relationship between the public and private sector when it comes to space activity. There needs to be regulatory flexibility. There needs to be support for private sector growth and commercialization of space in general, and there needs to be not only support of the activities that we want, but the pathways that we need to get there. Things like indemnification, things like liability medication, things like, you know, a regulatory framework that actually supports the growth of these things so that they're fiscally possible.
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Maria Varmazas
Yes.
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Lauren Andrade
Yeah. And really, what I think a lot of the working groups boil down to is that these topics are things that we talked about kind of disparately, but at the same time, they're all interconnected, and they require really a whole of government and in a lot of ways, whole of commercial sector approach to achieve them long term.
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Maria Varmazas
That's interesting that you mentioned that, because I think often of think tank output. It is very government focused. But you're saying also that we want the commercial, the industry to sort of rally around this. That's an interesting approach to me.
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Lauren Andrade
Yeah. I mean, I think that one thing that Beyond Earth does incredibly well is we are a space policy think tank. And the thing that I always say about that is we want people to think. We want to bring people into the room together, whether those are government people, people from competing space companies, people from other nonprofits who have a combined and shared interest in space and say, all right, y'all, I get that we're all coming at this from different avenues. I get that we all might want ourselves to personally succeed, but how can we make this enterprise succeed? And how can we rely on each other and leverage each other to achieve that?
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Maria Varmazas
That's amazing. Crystal ball moment, if I may. We've got a new administration coming in. There's so much we don't know. But given that you're in. You're more in the world of Capitol Hill than I am. I'm in the Northeast, but way far away from this. Thoughts on maybe, you know, do you think the new administration will be receptive? Maybe more receptive? I mean, taking some wild swings here.
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Lauren Andrade
I think that historically we have seen the Trump administration be very supportive of space policy. What that means for the future and how that's going to evolve I can't say. But I am hopeful that as we move forward, the space industry will become something that is a little bit more forefront in the hearts and minds of the general public because it's really easy to say, hey, your Internet depends on us. Your online banking depends on us. It's a lot easier to think about that in a really like theoretical way but to kind of forget that like this is real and space is real and these have impacts that far expand beyond. Rocket is cool. So.
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Maria Varmazas
But rocket is cool.
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Lauren Andrade
But rocket is cool. And so you know, there's a lot of interest there that we need to consider.
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Maria Varmazas
That's awesome. Well, Lauren, thank you so much for speaking with me. Really appreciate your time and congratulations on putting out.
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Lauren Andrade
Thank you so much.
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Maria Varmazas
Huge paper and I hope our audience reads it and we'll make sure if there's a link to that we will include that in the show notes on this interview.
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Lauren Andrade
Fantastic.
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Maria Varmazas
Yes. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it. I'll be right back.
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Lauren Andrade
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- [16:52]
Maria Varmazas
Welcome back. For our final item today, I thought I'd share some takeaways from the Beyond Earth symposium in Washington D.C. which as we've mentioned a couple times, was held last week and I was very happy to attend it. The event's theme was at the Crossroads and with the US Election having been just a week prior to the event, certainly the political and space policy crossroads came up a lot. What will the change in administration mean? Will it be good for space or just certain players? Lots of fascinating discussion around that and how space policy and law might or might not facilitate whatever's coming next. This was an admittedly US centric event and given its location, not a surprise. And a factoid that was mentioned during the event was that the US Space force has a larger budget than NASA. Lots of reasons for that, but it's a leading indicator of where we have seen and will continue to see a lot of space related investment. And while launch is very flashy and let's be honest, fun, it's a small part of the pie compared to satellites and cutting edge defense applications which get top dollar but still I hold out hope that groundbreaking science can continue too. And finally, a personal highlight for me was interviewing sci fi legend Rondi Moore, who is the writer slash creator slash producer of Star the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, Battlestar Galactica, and for all mankind. I really enjoyed his insights into what in real space inspires his creative work in sci fi space, as well as his thoughts on how we in the space industry can get more people excited about what we're doing. And for his answer on that specifically, well, tune in when we drop my full interview with him later this week. Sorry, you gotta wait a few more days. I'm especially thankful to all the wonderful T minus listeners who recognized my voice in the halls and said hello. It was so wonderful to meet you all, and I am especially grateful to the Beyond Earth Institute for the invitation to attend their event. That's it for T minus for November 19, 2024, 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. This episode was produced by Alice Carruth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Our executive editor is Brandon Karpf. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilby is our publisher and I'm your host, Maria Varmazas. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomor t.