← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
SpinLaunch lifts off towards orbital space.
00:28:30
SpinLaunch contracts NanoAvionics for 280 satellites. Portal Space raises $17.5M. ispace-US forms a US Lunar Advisory Board. And more.
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- [00:02]
Maria Varmazas
You're listening to the N2K space network.
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Stephen Jordan Tomaszewski
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Foreign.
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Maria Varmazas
Today is April 3, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazas and this is T minus T minus 20 seconds to Los Live ISS National Lab launches an accelerator program to integrate startups and investment partners in Space4PL Space and Deorbit have signed a launch agreement to Deploy satellites aboard Miura 5 to equatorial orbit. ISpace US has formed a US Lunar Science Advisory Board chaired by Dr. Alan Stern. Portal Space Systems raises $17.5 million in a seed round. SpinLaunch receives investment from Kongsberg and contracts Nanoavionics for a satellite constellation 00. And our guest today is friend of the show Stephen Jordan Tomaszewski, AIA Vice President of Space Systems and Steve and I will be discussing AIA's strategic priorities for 2025, so stick around to find out more later in the show. Happy Thursday everybody. We are in the final few day stretch before heading off to Space Symposium Number 40 in Colorado Springs next week. So let's dive into today's intel briefing, shall we? And it's been a little while since we've heard from Kinetic launch company Spinlaunch. And boy have they returned with big plans. The California based company announced a $12 million investment from Kongsberg Defense and Aerospace in support of their newly announced Meridian Space Satellite Communications constellation. In fact, Spinlaunch has contracted Kongsberg's nanoavionics to exclusively supply satellites for the initial tranche of the LEO broadband Constellation under a contract valued at 122.5 million euros. SpinLaunch says the constellation will provide global coverage with only one traditional rocket launch, deploying 250 next generation microsatellites that leverage a proprietary suite of technologies. The partnership between SpinLaunch and NanoAvionics includes two prototypes, one of which is an in orbit demonstrator mission planned for 2026, as well as the development and serial production of 280 satellites. The Meridian Space Constellation plans to grow to at least 1,200 satellites and to meet the 280 satellite constellation production schedule. Nanoavionics says it'll ramp up its manufacturing capabilities with the addition of a new assembly and testing facility at its European headquarters in Lithuania. We can't wait to see those satellites Yeet to space and I have been told that yeet isn't a word used by the youth anymore, but I'm not young so I don't care. Spinlaunch has a suborbital system developed at Spaceport America in New Mexico, but it seems that their orbital launches will be happening from Alaska. The Aleut Corporation, which is the Alaska Native Regional Corporation for the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands, have signed an exploratory lease agreement to develop a launch site on Adak Island. Spinlaunch says the agreement establishes the foundation for a long term collaboration that capitalizes on adaac's unique geographic and logistical advantages, with plans to create a facility that will position Adak as a key player in the rapidly expanding global space industry. And we wish them all the best of luck. Portal Space Systems has closed an oversubscribed $17.5 million seed round. The Seattle based satellite company plans to use the funding to accelerate the development of their transorbital spacecraft engineered for contested and congested space environments. The capital will support the first full scale demonstration of the company's Supernova spacecraft. Supernova uses a solar thermal propulsion system that Portal says delivers the performance of nuclear thermal propulsion without requ a fission reactor. As a result, Supernova achieves the long range mobility necessary for dynamic space operations at a fraction of the cost, risk and regulatory challenges of systems with comparable performance. The spacecraft is expected to undergo a critical Design review in Q2 2025 with Propulsion Testim system integration and a launch expected for mid-2026. And if you want to learn more about Portal Space Systems, then definitely check out my chat with Portal's co founder and CEO Jeff Thornberg, back from Fe 15th. It's a fantastic conversation. We'll include a link for you in our show. Notes Ispace US has formed a US Lunar Science Advisory Board and the initiative, which will be chaired by Dr. Alan Stern, has been launched in conjunction with the appointment of Elizabeth Crist as the new CEO of ispace US. The board is aiming to advance ispace US's competitiveness in the US market and elevate the company's scientific capability by leveraging the experience of distinguished leaders in the space industry. The Board will work to provide insights and recommendations to Ispace US on matters related to scientific lunar exploration, technology development, strategic partnership, business strategy and socioeconomic assessments. Ispace says the board's guidance will be instrumental in advancing the company's mission to establish a sustainable cislunar economy and contribute to the broader goals of realizing Ispace's vision, called Moon Valley 2040, Italy's deorbit has signed a launch agreement with Spain's PLD Space to Deploy satellites aboard PLD's Miura 5 to equatorial orbit. Miura 5 will be launching from its site at the CSG in French Guiana. They say the spaceport provides one of the few dedicated low inclination launch opportunities available, offering customers direct access to equatorial orbits. PLD Space is currently working on the serial production for Miura 5 units using the flight proven technology coming from Miura 1 with the aim of starting its test flight campaign by the end of this year. Commercial flights of Mira 5 will begin in 2026 with the objective of scaling up to 30 launches per year by 2030. PLD Space says it has now fulfilled more than 80% of the slots in its manifest until 2027 and the international Space Station National Laboratory has launched the Orbital Edge Accelerator program. It's designed to integrate cutting edge startups and investment partners into the rapidly expanding space economy. The program will select six startups to receive an investment of up to $500,000 each, along with mentorship and the opportunity to launch an ISS National Lab sponsored investigation. The accelerator aims to unlock discoveries that can benefit humanity and drive new commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit. Definitely follow the link in our show notes to find out more about how you can appreciate that's it for Today's intel briefing. N2K senior producer Alice Carruth has more on the stories that didn't make today's Top five.
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Alice Carruth
Alice thanks Maria. It's increasingly hard to pick the top stories every day, so we always add a few extra that we believe you should be keeping an eye on. Today we have news of Carmen Space and Defense's new clean room for space aircraft assembly, an investment update from Turian Space, a new partnership between Dhruva Space and Japan's Infostella, and a write up on the US Space Force's first war game for the Commercial reserve.
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Maria Varmazas
And please remind the T minus crew where those stories can be found.
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Alice Carruth
As always, Maria, we add links to the original source materials for all the stories we mention throughout the show in the Selected Readings section of our Show Notes. Those links can also be found on our website space.n2k.com and just click on this episode page.
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Maria Varmazas
Hey T minus 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.
- [10:03]
Stephen Jordan Tomaszewski
Are you frustrated with cyber risk scores backed by mysterious data, zero context and cloudy reasoning? Typical cyber ratings are ineffective and the true risk story is begging to be told. It's time to cut the bs. Black Kite believes in seeing the full picture with more than a score. One where companies have complete clarity in their third party cyber risk using reliable quantitative data. Make better decisions, reduce your uncertainty. Trust Black Kite.
- [10:45]
Maria Varmazas
Our guest today is Stephen Jordan Tomashevsky, AIA Vice President of Space Systems. And AIA have recently released their space priorities for 2025 and we've included a link to that list under the guest section of our show. Notes. Definitely. Go check it out.
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Stephen Jordan Tomaszewski
I'm Steve Jordan Tomashevsky, the Vice President for Space Systems at the Aerospace Industries association and our trade association represent nearly 300 companies across the aerospace defense industry. That's everything from big companies that are making launch vehicles and satellites down to some of the smaller companies that are really enabling some innovation across the sector. We just finished updating our 2025 space priorities. So what we've done over the last several months is go out to all of our companies and just ask them what are the key things and the takeaways that we should be doing collectively, especially between government and industry to really unlo and enable the space economy. We kind of broke it down into priorities that the government can do at large to work better with the space industry. And then we also kind of focus down to look at the major sectors in space, looking at national security, space, civil space, and then kind of the commercial space sector as well.
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Maria Varmazas
It's a really robust list and we'll make sure that we link it for our listeners and viewers because people really should take a look at and I know we're not gonna be able to cover every single point, but people should definitely read through it cause there's a lot there. Let's start with like an executive summary version, which I hate asking cause again it's like people should read the whole thing. But if we're gonna take away some sort of top line trends or overall themes of this priority list, what can you tell me?
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Stephen Jordan Tomaszewski
First of all, I think this is very timely because we do have a new administration and a new Congress and everyone wants to know, you know, what does industry want to see happen and how can we advance collect. So at a very high level, some of the things that companies are calling for right now is to really take a sharp look at the current regulatory environment for space. So, you know, if you're putting up satellites into space these days, depending on what type of satellite you're putting up, there's a number of different hoops that you have to jump through in order to preserve our safety, but then also to make sure that you're operating your satellites effectively and your launch vehicles effectively. So it's always a good to really kind of scrub those regulations and making sure that they're right sized to be able to continue to protect safety, but then also to not be too much of a burden on businesses. We also are asking for strengthening of the supply chain. There's a lot of technological trends that are happening across the space industry right now, such as proliferated low earth orbit constellations and a lot of launch vehicles coming online. With all of that, it's going to allow us to do more and more in space, but it's going to propose some unique challenges to really be able to scale up and meet the manufacturing capacity needs for these new types of constellations. And then also we're asking for investing in space infrastructure. So, you know, similar to if you think about airports and ports in the maritime domain, we need to make sure that our infrastructure that enables all the great launch vehicles and satellites to go up into space, those need to be strategically invested with a combination of government funds and then also taking advantage of private sector funds.
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Maria Varmazas
Okay, so yeah, of the three that you mentioned, the one that I remember I was really latching onto was the supply chain. All three of those priorities you mentioned come up a lot in my conversations with people. But I'm fascinated by the supply chain one, especially when we're talking about strengthening supply chain. I mean, there are so many challenges there. What are the sort of takeaways on that specifically?
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Stephen Jordan Tomaszewski
Well, this year our trade association, AIA is going to be looking really deep into the space supply chain and the industrial base and trying to see where are those common bottlenecks or challenges across the board. Where this really comes down to is I would characterize in the past when we've talked about supply chain for space, we've really had a major focus on ensuring that our systems and current infrastructure are secure from potential threats to the supply chain. So think like cyber attack against it. And we really haven't had to worry too much about mass manufacturing or increasing capacity at different factories. But we are now starting to see that we have thousands of satellites that are getting manufactured. We have new launch vehicles. So this really could be anything from some of the raw materials, some of the critical minerals, or perhaps even things like the gases that we use to fuel our satellites. But then also there's a lot of space unique components. You can kind of think of things like satellite solar panels, satellite batteries, star trackers, reaction wheels. It's those types of things that aren't always talked about, but they're really what is at the heart of our modern space capabilities. And we need to scale up production for these. So I think there's a role for government there as well, because especially for things that have national security implications, we want to make sure that we have enough capacity to be able to meet all the demands of what we're going to be using space for in the future.
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Maria Varmazas
Absolutely. And I guess related question on space infrastructure, if you could drill into that one as well, another hot area that again, it comes up all the time. I'd love to hear more on that.
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Stephen Jordan Tomaszewski
Yeah. So for infrastructure, just think about. I think looking at launch vehicles is a very great example of this. It's not just, you know, having a factory where you can make a new launch vehicle. It's also being able to transport that to the launch complex at the end of the day. So when we're looking at making infrastructure investments that could be anything for making sure that our waterways are big enough, if you're transporting launch vehicles, for example, on a river. But it could also be making sure that our bridges are reinforced to be able to bring very heavy space objects over. And a lot of those investments can really enable industry to be successful at all. There's examples right now where, hey, if we make some investments in a particular bridge or a particular roadway or kind of work with some local authorities to be able to transport things around better, it's going to allow companies to do that cheaper. Especially in the government being such a big part of the space industry effectively passes on the savings to the government in those ways. And it allows just the more capacity getting more things out to space and allow all that to happen a lot faster.
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Maria Varmazas
Excellent. All right, so I got it, and I'm rounding back to the beginning about the regulatory environment. This is a huge conversation as well, and certainly it's been ongoing for years. What are we looking for out of the new administration to maybe improve the regulatory process or the burden, so to speak. Speak.
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Stephen Jordan Tomaszewski
Yeah. So I think there's always opportunities for efficiencies and regulatory processes right One of the things that we've been consistently advocating for at AIA over the last several years is to make sure we even have enough regulators with the right type of technical expertise in the first place to be able to meet the demands and all the new regulatory applications that are coming in. So if you think of things like the Federal Aviation Administration and their Office of Commercial Space Transportation that reviews and approves licenses for launch and reentry, so making sure that they're able to do their jobs with the right expertise to keep Americans safe at the end of the day, but enabling all the great innovation and being able to be the least burdensome possible for some of these new capabilities. Or if you look at areas like the Department of Commerce has the Office of Space Commerce, and they have a regulatory agency that looks at remote sensing satellites. So think about taking pictures from space. So making sure that offices like that are properly staffed up to be able to preserve national security interests, while at the same time providing that certainty for companies. And then you have new areas that really haven't been regulated yet. So one example of that is what some folks would call mission authorization or for novel space activities. So if you want to do things like refueling satellites in or moving satellites out of the way, maybe to a more safe graveyard orbit, there's not a good regulatory process currently for that to happen. So there's opportunities like that as well. And I think that the big message from industry here is if there is more regulatory certainty of what to expect, what timelines to expect, that allows businesses to raise capital, that allows businesses to know what, what the steps forward with the government are going to be, and allows them to really kind of push the boundaries of new areas.
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Maria Varmazas
Fantastic. One area that it comes up all the time also. I mean, all of these priorities, again, they make a lot of sense. As I read through them, the space workforce, huge area of concern for everybody. I would love to get a bit more of your thoughts on how we can continue to grow and address that pipeline issue.
- [20:39]
Stephen Jordan Tomaszewski
One of the things we've taken a look at over the last several years at AIA is how the workforce can really enable these new technological breakthroughs coming to the space industry. And it's not just your really advanced rocket engineers. At the end of the day, in order to mass manufacture satellites or launch vehicles, you also need a skilled technical workforce. So this is making sure that you have enough folks, think of welders or machinists, folks that are actually putting satellites or launch vehicles together are a crucial part of all this. So it's going to be important, kind of similar to identifying certain supply chain bottleneck issues. It's not just having access to raw materials or components that eventually go into more complex systems. It's making sure that you actually have the folks trained up and able to make all that happen.
- [21:49]
Maria Varmazas
We'll be right back.
- [21:56]
Stephen Jordan Tomaszewski
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- [22:40]
Maria Varmazas
Welcome back. Our final story today is all about space food and it involves one of my favorite condiments, Miso. And now Miso is a fermented soybean paste that is a staple of Japanese cuisine. It's well known as the base in the eponymous miso soup, but I love it. As a glaze on fish or on roasted eggplant, it imparts a deep umami flavor to just anything you use it on. I love it. And now that you're hungry like I am, here's the space tie in. Researchers at MIT and the Technical University of Denmark have found that miso fermented aboard the ISS developed nuttier, more roasted flavors than its Earth based counterparts, thanks largely in part to higher temperatures in orbit. Yes, the research team actually did a taste test. Isn't that awesome? The ISS miso contained more pyrazines, which are flavor compounds that are linked to roasted notes. And the ISS miso even showed some unique microbial changes, possibly influenced by the radiation. Now, we're not sure yet if that affected the flavor, but it certainly warrants more investigation, don't you think? The study of how miso fermentation works in space was published in Iscience just yesterday and suggests that fermentation can actually thrive in space. So add this to your trivia list. Miso is now officially the first food fermented in space. And with a successful miso fermentation, this could mean that astronauts can channel their inner millennial and ferment all the and potentially expand their food options beyond pouch and stereotypical freeze dried meals. Who knows, maybe one day we might hear about space pickles, yogurt, sourdough, kimchi. Mmm. Delicious. That's it for T minus for April 3, 2025 brought to you by N2K Cyberwatch 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 Carouse. 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 Ivan. Peter Kielpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. T minus.
- [25:30]
Stephen Jordan Tomaszewski
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