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- [00:02]
Maria Varmazis
You're listening to the N2K space network.
- [00:10]
Dave
Krogle is AI built for the enterprise SOC. Fully private schema free and capable of running in sensitive air gapped environments. Krogle autonomously investigates thousands of alerts weekly, correlating insights across your tools without data leaving your perimeter. Designed for high availability across geographies, it delivers context aware auditable decisions aligned to your workflows. Krogle empowers analysts to act faster and focus on critical threats, replacing repetitive triage with intelligent automation to help your SOC operate at scale with precision and control. Learn more@krogle.com that's C-R-O GL.com today is July 10th, 2025.
- [01:04]
Maria Varmazis
I'm Maria Varmazis and this is T minus T minus 20 seconds. NASA has awarded advanced space a follow on phase two sibber contract to develop design reference missions for CPNT CAPAB that are compatible with NASA's LunaNet framework. Northwood Space has tested its first production ready Phased array antenna system, Australia's Gilmour Space and Japan's Space BD partner on rideshare opportunities. Varda Space has raised $187 million in a Series C funding round. US President Donald Trump has named Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy as the interim head of NASA. And today we will have the second part of my conversation with the Translational Research Institute for Space Health's executive director Dorit D', Onoviel, PhD. We're going to be talking about space medicine later in the show, so stick around for more on that. Happy Thursday everybody. Thank you for joining me. Let's dive into today's intel briefing. We're kicking off with a new appointment at NASA. US President Donald Trump has named Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy as the interim leader of the U.S. space Agency. On a social media post, Trump said of Duffy, he will be a fantastic leader of the ever more important space agency, even if only for a short period of time. The administration is yet to announce a nominee for the permanent role after withdrawing Jared Isaacman for consideration. Isaacman shared his thoughts on social media after Trump announced Duffy's new role. He said short of a new nominee, this was a great move. NASA needs political leadership from someone the president trusts and has confidence in. And speaking of shakeups at NASA, at least 2,145 senior ranking NASA employees are set to leave the space agency, according to documents obtained by Politico. The losses are particularly concentrated around senior management positions, with 875 GS 15 GS 15 employees set to leave, according to the documents. And for those like me who also don't speak US federal government pay scales. GS15 is basically the highest you can get on the base pay scale for US Civil service. The departures follow a proposed White house budget for 2026 that would slash NASA's funding by 25% and cut over 5,000 staff. And speaking of that budget, at the time of recording today's show, NASA's budget is being actively debated by the Senate Appropriations Committee. That's an important step in the budget approval process and we will be bringing you updates on the outcome of any approvals once they have been confirmed. Moving on Varda Space has raised US$187 million in a series C funding round. The new amount brings the total raised by the microgravity enabled life sciences company to $329 million. Varda has completed three successful launch and return missions with a fourth called W4 currently in orbit and a fifth expected to launch before the end of the year. Varda's CEO Will Brewey says the company will use the capital to build out the pharmaceutical lab that will deliver the world's first microgravity enabled drug formulation. Varda's orbital laboratories are the first to process materials outside of the International Space Station and mark the beginnings of commercial expansion into low Earth orbit. Congrats to them. Yesterday we had a flurry of international collaboration announcements, but one that we unfortunately missed was Australia's Gilmour Space and Japan's Space bd and those companies have announced a partnership to offer dedicated rideshare opportunities on Gilmour Space's ERIS launch vehicles and Alara Sat platforms, opening new mission options for Japanese and global satellite customers. SpaceBD has supported more than 90 satellite missions and over 600 space related projects with expertise in launch integration, satellite deployment and supporting experiments on the iss, including in orbit demonstration services. The companies say that this partnership will expand SpaceBD's global offerings while strengthening space cooperation between Japan and Australia. Northwood Space has tested its first production ready phased array antenna system, known as Portal. It is designed for supporting satellites in low earth, medium Earth and geostationary orbits. Northwood says Portal has demonstrated that it can deliver 1 kilowatt of transmit power and receive sub picowatt signals within the same face. These faces can be arrayed in modular configurations to support higher power levels such as 6 or 8 array configurations supporting 6 or 8 kilowatt power to geo at site. This milestone makes the Portal system the most powerful commercial communications phased array ever built. The company says it's still on track for global deployment beginning in Q4 of this year, NASA has awarded Advanced Space a follow on Phase two SIBR contract to develop Design reference missions for communication, positioning, navigation and timing or CPNT capabilities that are compatible with NASA's Lunanet framework. The project, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight center in Huntsville, Alabama, focuses on developing mission concepts for a standards based, interoperable lunar and Martian CPNT relay network. Advanced Space has partnered with Firefly Aerospace on this project, using Firefly's Elytra orbital vehicle as a transfer stage for this relay network. Lunanet is a collaborative effort involving NASA, ESA and potentially other international partners and commercial entities. It's focused on developing a lunar standards based, interoperable communications relay network for industry, academia and international partners. It is expected to deploy sometime before the end of this decade and that concludes our intelligence briefing for today. We will have more to come from Mike, chat with Dorit and news on Lockheed Martin's bid to save NASA's Mars sample return program. But before we get to all of that, our producer Alice Carruth has more on the stories that didn't make today's Top five. Alice, what do you got?
- [07:54]
Alice Carruth
Well Maria, we've added two additional links into the selected reading section of today's show. Notes. One covers the completion of NeoSpace Group's acquisition of up 42 from Airbus Space and Defense, and the other is about AWS's space accelerator program.
- [08:08]
Maria Varmazis
Both sound pretty interesting. Can you remind us where else those links can be found?
- [08:13]
Alice Carruth
We also include links to all the original sources of all the stories we mentioned throughout the show on the episode page of our website. Just head to space.n2k.com and click on today's episode title.
- [08:24]
Maria Varmazis
It/crew if your business is looking to grow your voice in the industry, expand the reach of your thought leadership, or recruit talent, T minus can help. We'd love to hear from you. Just send us an email@space2k.com or send us a note through our website so we can connect about building a program to meet your goals.
- [09:04]
Dave
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- [10:20]
Maria Varmazis
For our guest segment today, we've got the second part of my conversation with Dr. Dorit D'. Inovial. She is the executive director of Trish, or the Translational Research Institute for Space Health. And she joined me to tell me more about her fascinating work.
- [10:39]
Dorit D'Onoviel
Remember how to say my name? It's Doritos without the O's. That makes it real easy. So I have I am a associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine in the center for Space Medicine. But I also have an appointment in the Department of Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Biology. And how I ended up doing Space Health is one of these funny things that happens to you. And I say this to a lot of young people. You just never know when an opportunity comes up. You've never imagined you would end up where you are and yet it opens up a world that you are just like so happy in. It got me thinking about what's out there and just really being curious about the world. But I actually, my first love wasn't so much space, but it was biology and just the amazing ability of living things to adapt to an environment.
- [11:35]
Maria Varmazis
What happens when someone develops a condition in a long term mission? Like what? Because we try to do a lot to prevent stuff from happening through screening or whatnot. But are we working on what if somebody develops it while they're very much on a mission and not able to return home? Like, what do we do about that?
- [11:54]
Dorit D'Onoviel
Yeah. So that's fascinating. This is another area where I think space medicine is really going to be the driving force for innovations for Earth as well. And the reason I say that is right now we have the luxury of from low Earth orbit, we can bring somebody back. We can medically evacuate somebody and have them back home within a matter of hours.
- [12:14]
Maria Varmazis
Right.
- [12:14]
Dorit D'Onoviel
From the moon, it's a little more complicated. From the Moon it'll probably be a couple of days. So you start to worry a little more about a medical situation on the Moon. But even then you could probably stabilize somebody for a couple days and bring them back. It would be mission ending. Of course now consider a Mars mission. It really is a forcing function for medical innovation. And what I mean by that is no resupply capability, maybe even no medical support from Earth if there's communication delays or communication disruption, right? So you have to have the crew be completely self sufficient to be self sufficient in terms of the medical situation. First of all, you got to bring everything with you, right? Like you don't. You're not going to be able to replenish your medications if they go bad over the three years that they're going to be on this mission. So medication, nutrition has to be just right. And then if you have to do a medical procedure, you can't possibly train for everything.
- [13:26]
Maria Varmazis
You just can't.
- [13:27]
Dorit D'Onoviel
And even if you did train on it, it was like two years ago and you forgot how to do it. So we are developing a capability for crews going to Mars that will absolutely require an AI component, a decision support, a, if you will, the bones. You remember bones.
- [13:51]
Maria Varmazis
Thinking of bones. Yes.
- [13:54]
Dorit D'Onoviel
Bones that will actually help the crew. Because even if they do have a medical doctor on board that goes on this mission, they can't possibly cover everything and know everything and they're going to need help. So we are developing those kinds of tools just in time, training. And then the other thing is most people just go on the web and they'll google their symptoms. And the large language models today for medicine are actually pretty good. But you're not going to have that on. You're not going to have the Internet on the way to Mars.
- [14:27]
Maria Varmazis
No WebMD on the way to Mars.
- [14:29]
Dorit D'Onoviel
Right? That's right. So we are actually building a capability of making you DIY healthcare.
- [14:38]
Maria Varmazis
Again, this is an extreme environment. Don't try this at home. But yes, yes. And this makes a lot of sense to me, as I said, like when I have these conversations with people about, you know, one day going to Mars, it's like it's the human machine that I think we, you know, that I'm so fascinated by. And yeah, you're right, you have a doctor with you, could be the doctor who needs the help. So then what are you going to do? You are tackling such fascinating problems like what do you do about all this?
- [15:02]
Dorit D'Onoviel
It's so cool because I think the tools that we develop, because we have to, it's not a luxury. You must have these tools. And that's the thing about a Mars mission. It forces you to make those innovations in foods, in a new way of doing healthcare. All those things will mean that we can increase access to people on Earth to all these other innovations that are coming from space for healthcare and for nutrition. So to me, and the behavioral health. We haven't even touched the behavioral health.
- [15:33]
Maria Varmazis
I know, I was just thinking that too. Yeah. Yep.
- [15:36]
Dorit D'Onoviel
Confined in that space for a long period of time. I mean, how do you stay mentally resilient? Many of us started like baking right. During the pandemic.
- [15:46]
Maria Varmazis
We all got a little taste of that and all went bonkers. The mental resilience of crew in a. Without the creature comforts that we're all used to, what can one replicate? How does one increase resilience? I mean, this is talk about the final frontier. I mean, to me, that getting very tricky, but that really is the big question. Also, if you can't go outside and see a tree, you know, how, how. How do you. How do you manage this? So what do we do?
- [16:14]
Dorit D'Onoviel
Right, right. So we're exploring a lot of different things. You know, it's interesting, people have talked about maybe using a virtual world to recreate Earth. It depends on the individual because some people actually make some more homesick, sadder because they're not there. Other people are fine with it that really feel like they're getting that experience. But it also needs to be the multisensory sort of experience. Our brains also, it's use it or lose it. So we know that when people go to Antarctica for long periods of time, say nine months at a time, and they're not getting stimulation and the light cycle's all messed up, their brains actually start to shrink. Your brain is much like a muscle. If you're not using all the senses, all of the parts of the brain, in essentially analyzing all the different inputs, because there's no inputs, it's like very monotonous. We know that that's a problem. So how do we keep them stimulated? And so it will be a technical solution. It absolutely has to be a technical solution. Yeah. But it can't just be Netflix, right? Like that. Your brain on Netflix ain't gonna be good on the way to Mars.
- [17:22]
Maria Varmazis
I love to chuckle about it. And I also recognize that we are so complex as crazy human beings. And to me, sure, we can figure out a rocket tomorrow, but it's us human machines that really require a lot of care. I'm always really fascinated hearing about these different experiments going up, just because it's just so neat to me to see what we're trying to unravel and what insights are being gleaned. So thank you for taking the time to walk me through just a tiny Tiny bit of what you all are working on. I can only imagine this is like, the tiniest fraction, so. What a fascinating field you're in, though. Oh, my gosh. If I could do it all over again, I'd be like, can I intern for you? This is gonna be so fascinating.
- [18:03]
Dorit D'Onoviel
We do have an internship drone. Come on over.
- [18:08]
Maria Varmazis
Oh, my God. So, listeners, take note that I know many of y' all are looking for your next move. Um, well, thank you. Seriously, thank you so much for taking the time and speaking with me. Uh, is there anything you want to leave our audience with before we close out today? Anything at all?
- [18:21]
Dorit D'Onoviel
Yeah, you know, the future is really interesting. You know, the government is becoming just one player, and it's exciting because it opens up the possibility for so much more. And, you know, the other thing I want to say is that people wonder, why bother sending humans to Mars when you can send robots? It's much cheaper and safer and all that. But the thing is that robots can't do everything. They get stuck, their tires go out, they run out of energy. They can't do everything. By pushing ourselves to get humanity out there, we are going to be pushing ourselves to develop new technologies, new capabilities, and new understanding of ourselves as humans and as humanity. And so, to me, that is the reason to go. Like, I don't know if your listeners know this, but the environmental movement for Earth began with that earthrise picture from that was taken off the moon, like, looking back from the moon back on Earth and going, oh, my gosh, look at this beautiful, precious planet. We got to protect it. That perspective you cannot get from a robot. You have got to send humans to get the perspective of what we're about, our place in the universe, our place in the solar system. So that's why I'm working on making sure humans can go.
- [19:44]
Maria Varmazis
It's beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise and your vision with me. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this chat.
- [19:50]
Dorit D'Onoviel
So much.
- [19:50]
Maria Varmazis
Thank you, Maria.
- [19:51]
Dorit D'Onoviel
Me too.
- [19:53]
Maria Varmazis
In a note that if you missed the first part of our conversation, we ran it on Tuesday's show. And that would be July 8, 2025. If you want to go back and have a listen. We'll be right back.
- [20:22]
Dave
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- [21:15]
Maria Varmazis
Not Dead yet desk. NASA's Mars sample return an eye Wateringly Expensive science dream or might it one day become reality? A number of the primes have been kicking the tires on Mars Sample Return or MSR for years and the price tag always came back pretty, pretty, pretty high. A mission that even had NASA saying the whole idea was just too slow and too expensive. And that is saying something. No offense NASA. It's a hard sell in the best of times for NASA, but right now, especially must I remind you of the proposed cuts from the White House desk? Even if those do not come to fruition, there just isn't a political appetite for a pure science mission costing nearly $10 billion right now. Even if that mission would be one for the history books for sure as one of the most scientifically ambitious projects ever attempted. But don't give up on this dream yet, says Lockheed Martin, as in late June they quietly dropped a new commercial proposal to NASA for the long awaited Mars Sample Return mission. Drumroll please. For the new potential price tag, Lockheed Martin is proposing a firm fixed price offering for under $3 billion. Do the math. That is a third of NASA's current $9 billion cost estimate in case it needs saying the Perseverance rover has been and is still hard at work collecting those Martian surface samples. So those samples just need a ride back. Not a simple task, but still, the value of the knowledge gained is priceless. These tiny bits of Martian soil and rock could hold evidence of ancient life, or at least tell us whether life ever had a fighting chance on the Red planet at all. And if we ever want to get humans to Mars. Speaking of a fighting chance. Yeah, I seem to recall some conversation about occupying Mars by some guy recently we need those Martian soil samples back so we can help future explorers know where to build, what to avoid, and how to stay alive once they get there. Now Lockheed says they've gained valuable insights from recent successful sample return missions that they've played a part in, including the asteroid sample return mission Osiris Rex that came back last year at in their experience building or operating three of NASA's current Mars orbiters. And Lockheed says they've got the juice. Flight Heritage baby. Their reduced price pitch says they can streamline operations and reduce mission complexity with a leaner lander, a smaller ascent vehicle, and a simplified Earth entry system. So really, who knows? A price tag cut of a third sounds good on paper, but three bill is still a bit of a big bill. But if NASA is able to take Lockheed up on its offer, we might finally get our hands on that dusty red dirt and do it faster, cheaper and smarter than before. And if not, well, China is working on their own MSR after all. Maybe they'll share and that is T minus Brought to you by N2K CyberWire we'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like the 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, 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 Carouse. 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 Kilby is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.
- [25:29]
Dorit D'Onoviel
T minus.
- [25:43]
Dave
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