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Maria Varmazes (0:41)
Today is June 4th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazes and this is T minus T minus 20 seconds to Los T. Drift Planet Labs has signed a six figure expansion of its contract with Welsh government. Maxar Intelligence is partnering with Saab to jointly develop next generation multi domain battlespace solutions. Astroscale UK has successfully completed the critical design review for the ELSA M in orbit demonstration spacecraft. Red Wire's advanced lunar and Martian manufacturing technology, called Mason, has passed its critical design review. Impulse Space has raised $300 million in a series funding round Happy Wednesday everybody. You did it. You're halfway through the week. Hope you're having a good one so far. Well, we've got a lot to get through in today's intel briefing, so let's just dive in. In space mobility company Impulse Space has raised $300 million in a series C funding round. The round, led by lintz capital, brings Impulse's total capital raised to $525 million. Impulse Space has signed over 30 contracts totaling nearly $200 million in value and growing interest from every sector. The company says it'll use the funding to scale and execute a backlog of missions. Impulse is expanding its workforce across engineering, manufacturing and mission operations. They're looking to accelerate R and D and to expand mission profiles, including integrating electric propulsion for long duration missions and developing new vehicles for national security and NASA applications. Redwire's advanced lunar and Martian manufacturing technology, called Mason, has passed its critical design review with NASA participation. Mason is a tool suite designed to operate on the moon and on Mars that Redwire says will enable the construction of berms, landing pads and roads for future lunar and Martian habitats. Okay, that's super cool. Mason is developed to convert lunar or Martian regolith into a strong solid material that's similar to concrete. The project, managed under a Tipping point agreement with NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, is part of a $12.9 million award to prototype Mason for broader plans to support a long term presence and exploration on the lunar surface. And with review now completed, Redwire engineers will fabricate the Mason critical design prototype and conduct functional testing of the three tools. Redwire says it is currently exploring flight opportunities for a demonstration mission. The UK subsidiary of Astroscale has successfully completed its critical design review for the ELSA M in orbit demonstration spacecraft. ELSA M, which stands for End of Life by Astro Scale Multiple, is set to launch in 2026 and will be the world's first commercial end of life service for prepared satellites, meaning satellites designed with technologies such as an interface that will enable docking and removal. The ELSA M IOD mission is supported by the UK Space Agency through the European Space Agency's Connectivity and Secure Communications Directorate. The mission is majority funded by Astroscale private funding and the remainder via co funding from the UK Space Agency via ESA and Eutelsat. Maxar Intelligence is partnering with Saab to jointly develop next generation multi domain battlespace solutions. The solutions will have a specific focus on advanced space based C5ISR systems and as a reminder, C5ISR stands for Command control, Communications, Computers, Cyber Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. These all will apply to the digital battlefield and GPS resilience for autonomous drone systems. The companies are aiming to provide solutions that will help Europe accelerate the development of more advanced sovereign space based capabilities. The partnership expands on Maxar's existing relationship with Saab, which has most recently focused on deploying Maxar's Raptor product for autonomous drone navigation and operation in GPs denied environments. Maxar's geospatial intelligence products will help Saab build more advanced C5ISR solutions through secure access to their commercial satellite imagery in near real time. And as a little reminder for our listeners, I spoke with Suzanne Hake, who is Maxar US's government general manager, last month about their GPS denied workarounds and we'll include a link for you to that chat in our show notes and lastly from Europe, Planet Labs has signed a six figure expansion of its contract with the Welsh Government. The Welsh Government is using Planet's satellite data to develop data driven routine monitoring systems for agriculture, water and land use change and emergency response. They've leveraged Planet's satellite data since 2020 and this expansion aims to further develop its existing work, moving from test and trial projects to development of operational systems in use as part of business as usual processes. This expanded agreement provides the Welsh Government with Planet's suite of products that provide imagery and data through this deal, these products are accessible to all eight universities in Wales through campus licenses to inform novel research and model future landscape scenarios for government policy. And that is it for today's Intel Briefing. Stay with us for more on space nostalgia and find out who got added to the Astronaut hall of Fame. But before that, N2K senior producer Alice Carruth joins us for an update on the other stories that we're keeping an eye on for today. Alice, what have you got?