Transcript
Alice Carruth (0:00)
Foreign.
Maria Varmazes (0:01)
You're listening to the N2K space network. What's the common denominator in security incidents? Escalations and lateral movement. When a privileged account is compromised, attackers can seize control of critical assets with bad directory hygiene and years of technical debt. Identity attack paths are easy targets for threat actors to exploit, but hard for defenders to detect. This poses risk in active directory, entra ID and hybrid configurations. Identity leaders are reducing such risks with attack path management. You can learn how Attack Path Management is connecting identity and security teams while reducing risk with Bloodhound Enterprise powered by SpectreOps. Head to SpectreOps IO today to learn more SpectreOps. See your attack paths the way adversaries do.
Alice Carruth (1:10)
Today is April 23rd, 2025. Happy St. George's Day. I'm Alice Carruth and this is T minus.
Maria Varmazes (1:20)
T minus 20 seconds to LOS.
Alice Carruth (1:31)
Mission space and Starcatcher are partnering to advance real time space weather monitor and orbital power solutions. Reflex Aerospace and Umbra are collaborating on synthetic aperture radar solutions for Europe. ESA's Earth Explorer biomass satellite has been secured on top of the Vega C rocket ahead of liftoff on April 29. Northward Space has raised $30 million in a series A funding round to support a global ground network. The U.S. space Development Agency has awarded $55 million to SAIC for Tranche 3 program and INT. So happy hump day everybody. I hope you're having a great week. You have me on the mic until Friday. Our host Maria Varmazes will be back from vacation next week. Let's dive into today's intelligence briefing, shall we? The U.S. space Development Agency has awarded Science Applications International Corp. Better known as SAIC, just shy of $55 million for the Tranche 3 program integration effort of the proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture known as pwsa. SDA released the solicitation late last year seeking industry proposals to provide systems engineering and integration activities supporting the T3 programme. This contract provides for system engineering and integration support activities enabling the delivery of the Tranche 3 space vehicles for transport, tracking and custody layers and their integration within the PWSA ground segment. The latter T3 custody layer is an envisioned future layer of the PWSA that would add the capability of continuous custody of target tracks. The SDA envisions the T3 program to provide sustained capability with advances over that developed with Tranche two. The work on this contract will be performed in Washington, D.C. and is expected to be completed by April 30, 2030. Northwood Space has raised $30 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round. Bridget Mendler, CEO and co founder of Northwood, shared on LinkedIn that the company is building a global ground network engineered to scale as fast as the missions supports. She says they have their sights set on building the largest shared network in throughput and link capacity. Northward is planning to outfit their sites with the ability to scale up to 100Gbps backhaul and are aiming to deploy multi link sites covering six continents by the end of 2026. The European Space Agency's Earth Explorer biomass satellite is scheduled to launch on a Vega C rocket from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana next week. On April 29, the biomass satellite has arrived at the launch pad and is now secured atop the Vega C launch vehicle. Biomass is the first satellite to carry AP band synthetic aperture radar capable of penetrating the forest canopy to measure the biomass and height of forests across the globe and across different forest types. The satellite will spend at least five years making detailed observations and witnessing at least eight growth cycles in the world's forests. ESA says data from the mission will improve current assessments and future projections of the global carbon cycle. It's hoped that observations from this new mission will also lead to better insights into the rates of habitat loss and as a result, the effect this may have on biodiversity in the forest environment. The satellite is fully configured for launch and will remain protected until liftoff. As part of the flight, VV26, Reflex Aerospace and Umbra are collaborating on providing synthetic Aperture Radar, or sar, solutions to Europe. As part of the agreement, Umbra will customize and build its SAR solutions for integration by Reflex into a dedicated satellite bus hosting the payload. Umbra says it will work with Reflex's team to design and customize a solution to meet mission requirements for the customer base. The companies plan to work together in Germany to ensure an independent and stable European focused supply chain. The move to prioritize national sovereignty in supply chain is a theme we're seeing more of in recent months. I wonder why Mission Space and Starcatcher are partnering to advance real time space weather monitoring and orbital power solutions. This collaboration combines Mission Space's space weather forecasting technologies with Starcatcher's orbital power grid, designed to enhance satellite performance by eliminating power constraints. Under this agreement, Mission Space will provide real time space weather data and predictive models to support the Starcatcher network, which in turn will deliver additional power to Mission Space's satellites under a newly signed power purchase agreement. Best of luck to the both of them. That concludes our intelligence briefing for today. N2K producer Liz Stokes has more on the stories that didn't make today's headlines.