← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
Space for reusable hypersonics.
00:24:28
Stratolaunch’s Talon-A2 completed its 2nd hypersonic flight. D-Orbit signs a new contract with SpaceX. Rivada Space and Pulsar Solutions to partner. And more.
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- [00:00]
Maria Varmazas
Foreign you're listening to the N2K space network.
- [00:11]
Unknown Sponsor Voice
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- [01:04]
Maria Varmazas
Foreign Today is May 6, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazas and this is T minus.
- [01:19]
Chuck Cinnamon
T minus 20 seconds to Los T drift.
- [01:30]
Maria Varmazas
Ispace's Resilience lunar lander, slated to enter lunar orbit tomorrow May 7 Rocket Lab has announced its next dedicated mission for IQPS on May 17. Ervada Space and Pulsar Solutions to partner on secure connectivity. Deorbit has signed a contract with SpaceX for additional launch capacity on upcoming transporter rideshare missions. Stratolaunch's Talon A2 vehicle successfully completed its second hypersonic flight and recovery last month, and today's guest is Chuck Cinnamon, President of Telesat Government Solutions. I caught up with Chuck at Space Symposium to find out the latest news with lightspace Speed, so stick around to find out more later in the show. Happy Tuesday, everybody. It is admittedly another quiet day here in the United States as the space industry holds its breath to see what comes next with federal projects. But we still have updates and new partnership announcements to get through in today's intelligence briefing, so let's dive in. We're kicking off with updates out of California. Stratolaunch's Talon A2 vehicle successfully completed its second hypersonic flight and recovery last month. This follows the first hypersonic flight of Talon A2, which was in December 2024, confirming the demonstrated reusability of the vehicle. The vehicle surpassed Mach 5 during its trajectory for the second time, exceeding the previous speed record set with the December flight. And Stratolaunch used Ursa Major's Hadley liquid rocket engine for the hypersonic tests and says these completed flights represent the United States return to reusable hypersonic flight test, the first since the X15 program ended in 1968. The company performed the flights for the Test Resource Management Center Multi Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Testbed program. Also known as Mach TB under a partnership with lidos, the mock TB program is intended to increase the speed of testing for all commercially available hypersonic platforms. George Rumford, director of the Department of Defense Test Resource Management center, added to the press release that demonstrating the reuse of fully recoverable hypersonic test vehicles is an important milestone for Mach tv, and added that lessons learned from this test campaign will help us reduce vehicle turnaround time from months to down to weeks. Congratulations to all involved. Moving over to some partnership updates now, Starting with Italy's Deorbit, they've signed a contract with SpaceX for additional launch capacity on upcoming transporter rideshare missions. The agreement gives Deorbit 16 ports across multiple missions. This new capacity will enable Deorbit to further scale its offering of launch last mile delivery services and in orbit demonstration opportunities for third party payloads. The Italian company already has four launches scheduled for 2025. In addition to the new contract, Bravada Space and Pulsar Solutions say that they will partner on secure connectivity for customers in commercial, maritime, agritech, enterprise and government markets. Pulsar plans to use Rivada's outernet to provide resiliency for a range of data connectivity solutions and a new level of cybersecurity for customers that require secure infrastructure in places with limited or no connectivity. Rivada Space Networks is scheduled for initial deployment of their Outernet satellite constellation this year, with full deployment anticipated by mid-2028. Rocket Lab has announced its next dedicated mission for Japan's Institute for Kyushu Pioneers of Space, also known as IQPS. The Sea God Seas is Rocket Lab's third mission for IQPS and the second in a lineup of eight dedicated missions across 2025 and 2026 to deploy IQPS's Constellation. The mission will launch from Rocket LAB Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand during a launch window that opens on May 17th. Rocket Lab will launch a single synthetic Aperture Radar imaging satellite called QPS SAR10, nicknamed Wadatsumi 1 for the Japanese God of the sea, to a 575 kilometer circular earth orbit where the satellite will join the rest of the IQPS constellation in providing high resolution images and Earth monitoring services globally. And ispace's Resilience Lunar Lander is slated to enter lunar orbit tomorrow May 7th. Resilience, the tenacious micro rover and customer payloads that they are all carrying, began their journey to the moon on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket earlier this year. They flew by the moon once already as part of the low energy transfer orbit and reached a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers from Earth and are now back from their deep space journey and getting ready for loi, or Lunar Orbit Insertion. Completion of the first Lunar Orbit Insertion maneuver and confirmation that the lander is in lunar orbit will complete success seven of the mission two milestones and we should have more on that milestone on tomorrow's show. And that wraps up today's Intel Briefing. Our senior producer Alice Carruth is keeping an eye on additional stories that didn't make today's top five. Alice, what have you got for us?
- [07:46]
Alice Carruth
Europe's Quantum Systems, who are a supplier for aerial intelligence Solutions, just raised 160 million euros for their unmanned aerial systems. It's a little more space adjacent, but definitely a company we're keeping an eye on.
- [07:59]
Maria Varmazas
And where can our listeners read more about that?
- [08:01]
Alice Carruth
We've included the link in our selected Reading section of our show notes and you'll also find them all on our website space.n2k.com just click on today's episode title.
- [08:11]
Maria Varmazas
Hey T Minus Crew. If you are just joining us, be sure to follow T Minus Space daily in your favorite podcast app. Also, if you could do us a favor, share the intel with your friends and coworkers. So here's a little challenge for you. By Friday, please show three friends or coworkers this podcast. A growing audience is the most important thing for us and we would love your help as part of the T Minus crew. If you find T Minus useful, please share so other professionals like you can find the show. Thank you. It means a lot to me and all of us here at T Minus.
- [09:05]
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- [09:57]
Maria Varmazas
Our guest today is Chuck Cinnamon, President of Telesat Government Solutions. I caught up with Chuck at the Space Symposium and asked for the latest news about their Lightspeed Constellation.
- [10:12]
Chuck Cinnamon
Lightspeed was specifically built or being built for enterprise, government and defense users. It's not for the consumer direct to home kind of capability. It's for the telcos, it's for government, for Defense. And one of the most important things that the company has done from the beginning in this design with MDA space is to build in the cybersecurity and the, the US government security requirements from the very start. It's not a bolt on after the fact. And so I think that's very synergistic with a company like viasat who's been at the forefront for government networks, military networks based upon secure networks. So I'm very excited because it brings that multi orbit capability that the DoD actually, all the international partners and even the commercial telcos are looking for is having that multi orbit, multi frequency kind of capability. And I think it's a great partnership.
- [11:13]
Unknown Guest Voice
Well, congratulations on that. Wonderful news. And yes, so much of what you just said aligns with a lot of where we hear market trends moving towards in terms of the integration from development onwards of security, especially for these sensitive customers, as you mentioned, as well as working within proliferated LEO constellations makes a lot of sense. It's really, it's where things are moving in the right direction.
- [11:37]
Maria Varmazas
So it's great to hear that you.
- [11:38]
Unknown Guest Voice
All are at the forefront of that as well.
- [11:40]
Chuck Cinnamon
Yeah. And the fact that security was built in from the beginning, it kind of broadens the perspective in how our customers can access, potentially even own a piece of a telesat network.
- [11:56]
Unknown Guest Voice
Tell me more about that.
- [11:57]
Chuck Cinnamon
Yeah, so traditionally the Geo constellations you have people that are kind of leasing bandwidth to run their networks over. One of the innovative ways that Lightspeed is going to offer service is capacity pools, which actually sells pools either by volume or by data rate to customers to allow them to basically own that capacity and operate it for themselves. And you know, we believe that this is going to have a be a needle moving capability that again government and defense, we're already seeing it. On the enterprise side, the commercial team has already done some early sales. You heard about the Orange landing station and capacity by the Space Norway deal. So those things are indicative of early commitments by the telco side of things.
- [12:54]
Unknown Guest Voice
Orange and France, I'm just. Yes, Orange. Took me a second. Yep, I remember.
- [12:57]
Chuck Cinnamon
And they're going to have a landing station as well as a capacity pool. Again even with viasat, you know, they're going to have access to capability that is going to bolster the aero and maritime and defense markets. But again for militaries and even international partners, the ability to have something like a capacity pool that now they can share and use as contribution, you know, to a joint operation in the future. You know, we see that as kind of game changing versus hey, you're just leasing this particular satellite or bandwidth over the satellite.
- [13:34]
Unknown Guest Voice
It sounds like a paradigm shift. Honestly it makes a lot of sense given the challenges and not just in the market, but also the opportunities that people are looking for. So I think it makes a lot of sense. I'm curious about your thoughts about maybe trends in satellite that you're seeing that are going on right now.
- [13:50]
Chuck Cinnamon
Well, I mean, you know, obviously the big trend is the transition from the GEO market to the LEO market. I mean the big thing that people are looking for is the reduction in latency, you know, from a government and defense. It's all about not only the resiliency but the security. You know, we know that there are emerging threats and active threats against the GEO constellation or constellations in geo. I mean if you think about it, you know, a satellite that's in GEO stays over the same place of the planet 247365. It gives constant access to a would be adversary to understand how we use the satellite and to plan to do something nefarious. The thing that other orbits, whether it be, you know, the medium earth orbit and specifically LEO and even you know, like what Norway's doing, space Norway with the HEO orbit, you know, that gives a different kind of problem from an adversary to understand who's operating on the satellite, where they're being, you know, where they're communicating from, where the network's going, where the traffic's going. Again, that's another thing that I think is a differentiator. You know, it's, you know, I'm very excited about. Within lightspeed is the idea that we're going to have the optical intersatellite links that would allow, you know, somebody on one side of the planet to have their traffic land wherever they want or not land or what.
- [15:29]
Maria Varmazas
I was going to say, yeah, in.
- [15:30]
Chuck Cinnamon
Certain places that maybe they don't want it. But you know, using those links, not sacrificing that much in terms of that latency, still getting their traffic to land where they want. And that entire end to end network looks nothing more than like an ethernet plug in terms of that optical Ethernet standard that lightspeed is using. So it's very exciting. I think it also offers the opportunity to kind of coalesce around a standard that perhaps allows for interoperability amongst other LEO constellations, even if it has to be done on the ground. So again, in terms of, you know, what are the emerging trends, you know, the government's been pursuing for a while this thing called, you know, Multi orbit, multi frequency terminals and networks. That was something that was near and dear to my heart. When I was in la, we were kind of reimagining what does the future of SATCOM look like? If you're going to integrate and have hybrid networks between commercial and military, what are the standards, you know, that are going to allow for that interoperability?
- [16:37]
Unknown Guest Voice
It's not something you want to figure out later. Yeah, you got to figure that out up front.
- [16:40]
Chuck Cinnamon
It's a very complex undertaking. And by the way, you know, Lightspeed is very complex system and you know, I'm very excited to see how the team's working together. I just spent a week in Ottawa, you know, with the team, hearing from, you know, all the leadership there and I'm pretty excited about the progress that's being made.
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Maria Varmazas
That's fantastic.
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Unknown Guest Voice
Well, I really appreciate you sharing all this with me. I want to make sure I give you the opportunity to share any final thoughts before we wrap up.
- [17:03]
Chuck Cinnamon
I think, you know, the next 18 to 24 months for LightSpeed and for Telesat are going to be very exciting sightings. You know, we've got our challenges. Obviously this is very complex system but again I, I know that the, the team that Lightspeed has put together to, you know, to deliver the system is going to do a great job.
- [17:38]
Maria Varmazas
We'll be right back.
- [17:45]
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- [18:32]
Maria Varmazas
Welcome back. You know, the more I work on this show, the more I find myself brushing off long dormant crevices of my brain that once knew a thing or two about the basics of nuclear power. Now, nukes have always had a part to play in powering space missions and have for a long time. There are some interesting new developments in the last few years though. And here's another one. This one comes from Japan as it is turning to a long overlooked element to power its future space missions. The Japan Atomic Energy Agency, or JAEA and JAXA are developing a radioisotope battery based on americium. Now americium is a synthetic element so named because it was first created during World War II at UC Berkeley and sits under its analogous element europium on the periodic table. Little science history for you there. Americium, which is number 95 on the periodic table, is usually considered a nuclear oddball. It's best known for making smoke detectors work. It's a byproduct of plutonium decay and has a half life of over 400 years and gives off steady heat without the kind of fission that demands heavy shielding. That made it historically less attractive than plutonium 238, which powers NASA's deep space probes but also made it harder to weaponize. And that is something that might actually work in its favor for peaceful space applications today. So Japan wants to use Americium's consistent heat to generate power for missions that need decades long battery life. That would include probes heading beyond Jupiter or rovers exploring the frigid two week lunar night. The idea is that americium could become a compact, maintenance free power source that can survive moon dust, temperature swings and even a rocket explosion. Japan already has a working Americium powered LED demonstration and JAEA says they are aiming for a space ready prototype by 2029. That's it for T minus for May 6, 2025, 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. N2K Senior Producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We're 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'm your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. T minus.
- [21:47]
Unknown Sponsor Voice
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