← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
From Hall of Fame to New Space Capital.
00:24:34
SpinLaunch raises $30M for Meridian Space. CerraCap Ventures invests in Space Kinetic Corp. X-Bow and the US Army announce a $13.9M joint venture. And more.
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You're listening to the N2K space network.
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Today is August 19th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis and this is T minus Cass Space launched the eighth rocket in its Connecticut 1 series from China carrying seven satellites, including a pair built in Mexico. Canada's Nord Space says construction has finally officially begun at its Atlantic Spaceport complex in Newfoundland and Labrador. Crossbow Systems and the US army have announced a $13.9 million joint investment to strengthen the solid rocket motor supply chain for defense. Space Kinetic Corps has received an undisclosed amount of funding from SA Ventures. SpinLaunch has raised $30 million in funding to accelerate the development and commercialization of Meridian Space. Our guest today is Richard Cooper, who is the Vice President of Strategic Communications and Space Awareness at the Space foundation, and Rich and I will be discussing the nominations for the Space Technology hall of Fame, so stick around for more on that after today's headlines. Happy Tuesday everybody. Thank you for joining me. We're kicking off with a round of investment stories starting with SpinLaunch. They have raised $30 million in funding to accelerate the development and commercialization of Meridian space, which is SpinLaunch's low Earth orbit satellite broadband constellation. The funding includes new investment from existing investors, including lead investor ATW Partners, as well as the previously announced strategic investment from Kongsberg Defense and Aerospace. The company has completed full scale testing of its proprietary multiband reflect array antenna which they say enables the Constellation's ultra low capex design. SpinLaunch says it'll use this new capital raise to advance towards its first customer link in the second half of 2026 and accelerate its go to market EFF efforts. And they're not the only company announcing new investments today. Space Kinetic Core has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Saracap Ventures. Space Kinetic has designed a propellant free electromechanical system which deploys a diverse range of smaller payloads at high velocities from a host satellite without firing a thruster. These deployable payloads can be customized to support a broad range of priorities across the space superiority and missile defense mission areas. The investment comes amid surging global demand for scalable, cost effective space security solutions driven by escalating geopolitical tensions and the proliferation of adversary satellites. Crossbow Systems and the US army have announced a $13.9 million joint investment to strengthen the solid rocket motor supply chain for defense needs. The collaboration aims to design, prototype and test advanced manufactured solid rocket motors for the standard Range Guided Multiple launch rocket system, known as gmlrs. The investment, which was facilitated by the Department of Defense Office of Strategic Capital, aims to address constraints in the nation's production capacity for missiles, munitions and solid rocket motors. This initiative seeks to establish an alternative supply source and strengthen the solid rocket motor industrial base using Crossbow's advanced manufactured solid propellant processes for solid rocket motors, or SRMs. Let's head on up north now to Canada and Canada's Nord Space says construction has officially begun at its Atlantic Spaceport Complex in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Atlantic Spaceport Complex, also known as asx, will be Canada's first commercial space launch and first operational commercial spaceport. ASX was previously known as Spaceport Canada and is designed to support Nord Space's Tundra Orbital Launch Vehicle and partner launch vehicles, facilitating a wide range of orbital and suborbital missions. The launch site is expected to support Nord Space's first commercial launch of its Taiga Suborbital rocket, with its first launch window opening on August 25th. Yes, later this month. Wow. We wish them the best of luck. Let's check on in on China now and Beijing based commercial rocket manufacturer CAS Space launched the eighth rocket of its Kinetica 1 series earlier today, carrying seven satellites, including a pair that was built in Mexico. The rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite launch Center in northwestern China's Gobi Desert and placed the payloads a Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite, an Earth Observation satellite and five experimental satellites and into their preset orbit. Among the payloads, the Thumbsat 1 and Thumbsat 2 are mini satellites, each weighing about 100 grams, maybe around the size of a thumb, designed and built by Mexican private company Thumbsat. According to the company's website, Thumbsat1 carries a selfie payload aiming to capture its own mirror selfie in orbit. Thumbsat2 carries an artistic payload merging science and creativity, reminding us that exploration is not only about data but also about expression. I love that Thumbsat plans to set up ground receiving stations across Mexico to allow students and space enthusiasts to use antennas and software to track signals from orbit and take part in the mission that they say crosses borders and disciplines. That is very cool. And that wraps up today's top five stories for you. But there's always more going on in the space industry. You know it, I know it, and N2K senior producer Alice Carruth knows it too. So she joins us now with some of the other stories that we are watching. Alice, what have you got for us today?
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Maria we have three additional stories in today's selected Reading section. The first is on a Polish Consortium selection of four payloads that will fly aboard a suborbital rocket under a Polish Space agency funded launch service before the end of this year. The Tomex plus launch has been postponed again until no earlier than Thursday. And astronaut Shubanshu Shukla has met with India's Prime Minister following his mission with Axiom and has gifted him an Indian flag that flew on the iss.
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That is lovely. And where can we find out more about all of those stories?
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We include links to all the original sources of all the stories mentioned throughout the show in the selected Reading section of our show Notes. Those show notes can also be found on the episode page on our website space.n2k.com just click on today's episode title.
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Hey T Minus Crew. If you are just joining us. Hi and be sure to follow T minus Space daily in your favorite podcast app. Also, if you could do us a favor, please share the intel with your friends and co workers. A growing audience is the most important thing for us and we would love your help as part of the T minus crew. Yes you are part of the crew. So if you find T minus useful please share so other professionals like you can find us. Thank you so much. It means a lot to me and all of us here on T minus.
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Today's guest is Rich Cooper, Vice President of Strategic Communications and Space Awareness at the Space Foundation. And speaking of the Space foundation has an open call for nominations for the Space Technology hall of Fame. And Rich started by telling me about this initiative.
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The Space Technology hall of Fame is A partnership that Space foundation has with NASA to literally celebrate the respective technologies that have a space heritage but are now benefiting life here on Earth. And it's easy for people to sort of think of maybe a Velcro or a cordless tool, but the memory foam that is in a mattress or in is in a seat or the pacemaker that may be helping someone with their heart rhythm or is putting medication into their system. All of these things are coming from space. And what we look to do every year at Space foundation is we seek nominations to come into the Space Technology hall of Fame because we want to celebrate not just the technology, but we want to celebrate the people in the organizations that make them possible. So we've issued a call for nominations that anyone can submit a nomination. We have a set of criteria. Happy to share with you. But nominations are due by August 31, end of this month. And we would love to invite anybody from the space community who has a technology with a space heritage to share that with us to so that we could see whether it is worthy of induction into the Space Technology hall of Fame.
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Tell me a bit about the selection criteria and maybe the different categories that things get slotted into.
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We have five criteria that we're asking persons to submit this technology on. We want to first know about the public response. Does the public understand with this technology, what is that public benefit? And that leads into the second category, which is a societal benefit. How big is this benefit being shared? Is it only being shared by a small group or a large group? It doesn't matter how big or small that group is. But we do want to understand what type of societal impact this technology has had. Let's get down to economics. The economic benefit of it is this providing savings to consumers? Is it providing some efficiencies that a company could have or giving them new capabilities? So we want to know what the economic benefit of the technology is. Leadership who's been involved, who have partnered together to make this technology possible. And the last one is longevity. How long has this technology been around? There's not a hard and fast rule that we're looking for that the technology has to be 10, 20, 30 years old. It could be a recent technology. For example, CubeSats. CubeSats really haven't been around that long, but it's a technology we put into the hall of Fame about two years ago. And I think we can all safely say cubesats are truly revolutionizing what we're doing.
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Amen. Yeah.
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And so we want to make sure that the men and women, in this case, these were researchers out of Stanford who came up with cubesats and really laid the groundwork with cubesats that they were recognized. And that was a lot of fun to be able to meet those pioneers and celebrate them.
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That's so cool. Yeah. And then, so, and then the, the, the actual different technologies get put into different slots. Can you tell me what those are? The different categories?
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We have different categories that we divide all of these technologies on. But again, with technologies, they're always developing. So we are always at the ready to, you know, define a new technology category to bring in. We've got categories, for instance, communications technology, computer technology, the consumer, medicine, health care, public safety, recreation, transportation, manufacturing, health, home, and environmental and resource management. Those are the categories that we look for. But again, and we know a lot of technologies can be in several of those different categories. They don't have to be in just one or just two. The great thing about a space technology is we know it has incredible, incredible uses and benefits for a lot of different people that we get to discover over time.
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And you mentioned there's a jury. So it is a juried competition. So being. Did I, did I get that right? Is it is juried? Tell me.
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Yeah, you say jury, I'll say judges. But we do have a set of judges that when we get all those nominations in, we go through all of them, make sure that they filled out all the respective information that we have, and then we share that information with a panel of judges that we take from. Some of them are from NASA center, some of them are retirees, some of them are entrepreneurs, some of them are media people, people who have been around the space arena that have an idea of what the space community can do. But it allows those persons to take a step back and see some of these technologies and say, you know what? This one we need to give some extra special attention to. And every year at symposium, after the judges make those choices, we induct those two to three technologies a year into the hall of Fame. I mean, look, I'm a sports fan. It's great to see NFL players get their gold blazers. It's great to see baseball players get their plaques at Cooperstown. We give up medals and plaques at Space Technology hall of Fame. This is the space communities Cooperstown, in.
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My mind, a lot of times, especially in the broader public, we think of a lot of this technology as the stuff that's very laudatory, is usually if it's consumer, if there's a consumer analog for it, but that's often, not always the case. And that's okay. And that's wonderful.
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Well, not everyone is buying an aircraft.
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That's right.
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Yes. On an aircraft, you want to know that they've used the technology to make sure that that aircraft is as safe as possible.
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That's right. Yeah.
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And these tech and a number of these technologies contribute to, you know, airline and automobile safety, let alone spacecraft safety.
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Any faves, or maybe if you want to even remember the last set of.
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Hall of Famers, the two technologies are the gyro chip and the Super Lattice Infrared Detector or the strain layer Super Lattice. Gotta love these space names that they come up with.
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We do love our acronyms, don't we?
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We do.
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We do. Well, it's fascinating to think of what an interesting intersection it is of, you know, material science and all these different applications and all sorts of many, many different sciences go into the development of all these technologies and that, you know, space is such an amazing sandbox to really, really see, you know, how. How is it going to do in these extreme environments and then we get to benefit here on Earth. It's a really awesome thing.
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There's a song you may have heard of. You know, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
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Indeed, I might have heard that one.
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Technology that's going to go through the rigors of space, those are some pretty serious rigors. And not every technology that is made for space operates the same way here on Earth. But there are a lot of lessons learned that can come to that. When you think of the technologies that we got to use, that are applied in our automobiles or the planes that we fly on or any other type of transportation. There's a lot of structural design that has been improved, dramatically improved for safety, for energy efficiency, all because of different software systems or different computer systems that have come through the space community, that have then a life elsewhere, whether that be at General Motors or that be it Boeing, all of these technologies provide a benefit here on Thurston. We are still accepting nominations. Nominations are due August 31st. Here at Space Foundation. You can go to spacefoundation.org and search for Space Technology hall of Fame. And there is a form. Isn't there always paperwork involved with space that we are asking you to fill out to give us some more background on what these technologies are and who the people are that may have been part of it. It's great to herald the technology, but when you can celebrate the people and the organizations, be they a NASA center, be they a university, be they a you know, corporation that's out there, we want to herald those because those people are driving innovation forward. We want to continue that. So again, encourage people to submit nominations to us by August 31st. We'll be reviewing all of those nominations with our judges and then we'll announce the new inductees after the first of the year. And the formal induction will be at the 41st Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in April of 2020.
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And we'll be right back.
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Welcome back. Student science in space. It's not just fun alliteration. In fact, right now five student teams are gearing up to see their science head for orbit. And it'll be happening through Higher Orbit's Go for Launch program. And experiments from middle and high schoolers from the United States will be packed aboard SpaceX's upcoming Cargo Resupply Services 33 mission to the International Space Station, which is expected to launch no earlier than August 24th. So not long now. And actually we're coming up on 10 years for the Higher Orbits program, which is a nonprofit creating an experimental learning lab for secondary school students across the United States focused on the multifaceted worlds of space exploration, research and spaceflight in order to launch the next generation workforce that our world desires. And that's their wonderful self expression. It's a good one. And we have had Higher Orbit's founder and CEO Michelle Lucas on T minus quite a few times actually. We'll put some links in the show notes for you if you'd like to hear hear more about her organization story from previous apps. In any case, back to the upcoming Gopher launch. The five winning projects range from slime molds in microgravity to silkworms and sustainable food growth, all the way to biodiesel production in space. The students worked with Space Tango to refine their designs into flight ready payloads. It is a dream come true for the young scientists, many of whom will actually be in Florida to watch their experiments launch. What an experience to remember for them all, I am sure. And for Higher Orbits, it's also a really nice milestone. This launch will bring the total number of student experiments that they've sent to space to 24. Now take a moment, if you will, to think about the kind of life changing impact that student projects can have and multiply that by 24. It's quite a legacy. So well done Higher orbits and congratulations to all of the brilliant minds of the next generation on their incredible scientific achievements. And that's T minus Brought to you by N2K CyberWire we would love to know what you think of our podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like our 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 proud 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 helps space and cybersecurity professionals grow, learn and stay informed. As the nexus for discovery and connection, we bring you the people, the technology and the ideas shaping the future of secure innovation. Learn how@n2k.com N2K Senior Producer is Alice Carruth. 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 Ivan. Peter Kilpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.
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