← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
Success for Firefly’s Blue Ghost.
00:25:05
Firefly’s Blue Ghost successfully lands on the Moon. POLSA has detected a cyberattack. Spire achieves a two-way optical link between satellites. And more.
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- [00:02]
Maria Varmazes
You're listening to the N2K space network.
- [00:10]
Dave
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- [00:55]
Maria Varmazes
Today is March 3rd, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazes and this is T Min.
- [01:03]
Bailey Reichelt
T minus 20 seconds.
- [01:14]
Maria Varmazes
Aryan Space delays the first commercial launch of Ariane 6 from French Guiana. Four doge firings hit NOAA's Commercial Remote Sensing for regulatory affairs. Spire Global successfully established a two way optical link between two satellites in orbit are underway to determine who was behind a cyber attack on Poland's space agency. Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost successfully lands on the moon. And today we have the second installment of the monthly Ask Aegis Space Law segment. Bailey Reichelt and Jack Shelton from Aegis Space Law will be walking us through some of the frequently asked questions that space companies have when it comes to the laws of working here in the United States space industry. They're providing fascinating insights for both startups and established space companies. So join us after today's headlines for that Happy Monday everyone. And what a happy Monday it is for us space fans, huh? We're sure many of you stayed up into the wee hours of Sunday to watch Firefly Aerospace become the first commercial company in history to achieve a fully successful moon landing. Yes, IM one did come before Blue Ghost, but everything indicates that Firefly's first lunar mission achieved a perfect landing and and they even shared an image of the spacecraft's shadow fully upright. We should note on the surface and Earth on the horizon. The vehicle landed near a volcanic feature called Mons La Troil within Mare Crisium, a more than 300 mile wide basin located in the northeast quadrant of the Moon's near side. The successful moon delivery is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS initiative and the Artemis Campaign. Within a few hours, Blue Ghost's X band antenna had been deployed. The images, both stills and video, have been absolutely gorgeous to see. And we were greeted on social media this morning by sunrise images from the lunar surface marking the beginning of the lunar day and the start of surface operations. Firefly's ghostriders have already begun operating many of the 10 NASA payloads aboard the lander and will continue operations over the next two weeks and into the lunar night. And for their part, space stocks were climbing in pre market trade this morning and continued upwards throughout the day. It's going to be a busy week on the moon, with Im2 expected to touch down near the lunar South Pole in the coming days. We'll dig into the payloads on this Blue Ghost mission after today's Ask Aegis Space Lost Segment Investigations are underway to determine who was behind a cyberattack on Poland's space agency polsa. Poland's Minister for digitalization said that the Polish space agency's IT infrastructure sustained an unauthorized intrusion and that the agency has disconnected its network from the Internet while it investigates the incident. The nature of the attack is unclear at this time. The Register cites a source inside the agency as saying that the incident was related to an internal email compromise. Pulsa staff have been told to rely on phones while the investigation is ongoing. Spire Global has successfully established a two way optical link between two satellites in orbit. Those satellites, which launched in June 2023, are equipped with optical intersatellite link payloads, and the payloads create lasers that send information back and forth between the satellites securely and almost instantaneously while up to 5,000 km apart. Spire says this technology has the ability to enhance applications such as weather forecasting, global communications and remote sensing for navigation and environmental monitoring by increasing data speeds, enhancing security and reducing data latency. There are few US Federal agencies that have managed to avoid layoffs, thanks to the Department of Governmental Efficiency's cost cutting measures. And the latest layoffs have hit NOAA's office responsible for licensing remote sensing satellite companies. According to Breaking Defense, companies sending emails to the commercial remote sensing for regulatory affairs have have reportedly been receiving email responses redirecting their inquiries to the NOAA Office of General Counsel. The emails have reportedly said this is a temporary arrangement to address continuity of operations as no senior personnel remain in the office due to reductions in force. Many in the industry have raised concerns that this may cause delays in the approval of new licenses for satellite imagery firms and of any pending license modification requests from current operators. Certainly something our partners at Aegis Space Law will be watching intently and we'll know more about that impact in the coming weeks and months. Arianespace's Ariane 6 was scheduled to launch from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana at 13:24 local time earlier today for the first commercial flight Flight VA263, operated by Arianespace, is due to carry the CSO3 satellite for the French Procurement Agency and the French Space Agency on behalf of the French Air and Space Forces Space Command. But at the time of the scheduled liftoff, the livestream SIMP simply stated that there would be no launch attempt today. The message advised viewers to follow Aryan Space's social media for further updates. No updates were available at the time of this recording though, and that concludes today's intel briefing, but N2K senior producer Alice Carruth has more on what is happening in the space industry. Over to you Alice.
- [07:13]
Alice Carruth
Yes, Maria, we have a couple of launches to look forward to in the next 24 hours, starting with SpaceX's Starship test flight number eight, which is expected to launch around flight 5:30pm Central Time. So around now if you're listening to us at the time that we publish, we've included a link to the live feed in our Show Notes along with updates from Elyria and Keysight and Crossbow on their new office in Maryland.
- [07:34]
Maria Varmazes
And remind us, as always, where can we find those links?
- [07:37]
Alice Carruth
As always, we include links to further reading on all the stories mentioned throughout the episode in our Show Notes. Those links can also be found on our website space.n2k.com and click on this.
- [07:47]
Maria Varmazes
Episode title at -crew if you would like daily updates from us directly in your LinkedIn feed, be sure to follow the official N2K T minus page over on LinkedIn. And if you're more interested in the lighter side of what we do, here we are at T minus daily on Instagram and that's where we post videos and pictures from events, excursions and even some behind the scenes treats. Links are in the Show Notes. Hope you'll join us there.
- [08:30]
Dave
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- [09:43]
Maria Varmazes
As we mentioned a few times in today's show, our partners at Aegis Space Law are tackling a new segment on space law.
- [09:50]
Jack Shelton
Today.
- [09:51]
Maria Varmazes
They're discussing regulations.
- [09:56]
Bailey Reichelt
We are Bailey and Jack with Aegis Space Law, here to answer some space law FAQs. Bailey, I've got a hot question for you. This question is actually quite broad. It's simply, hey, we know that there's lots of regulations for businesses in the space industry. Can you give us a broad overview of what those are?
- [10:19]
Jack Shelton
So there's a lot of regulations that apply to the space industry. It's super highly regulated. That's why we always tell you if you're thinking about starting a business, yes, you have to figure out QuickBooks, but there's a lot more to it, especially in the space industry. And you have to start thinking about this as soon as you're developing your technology. So you're probably thinking about, okay, I'm building a thing, I eventually want to put it on some sort of spacecraft or payload, probably put it on a rocket. That's most business cases. And you obviously start thinking about the launch regulations and payload reviews and the faa. Sure, that's one part of it. And it can be a lengthy timeline. It doesn't actually cost money to talk to the faa, but you are going to spend some time and money on all the incremental steps, depending on what you're going to do, which is pretty nuanced. So I'm just going to skip to the other core regulations before we dive any deeper. You're also going to be thinking about telecommunications. If you want to talk to anything in space, then you have to think about your antenna and what allocation of the spectrum you're going to be using. Do you need those permissions and how long it's going to take you to get those permissions, or if you can, certain bands are more contested than others, but you have to talk to your thing if you want to give it commands. So you're going to be going through the FCC for telecommunications. But you're also, you may be doing an Earth observation mission. If you're looking back at the Earth or your remote sensing, you're going to be looking at Department of Commerce's noaa, the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, And NOAA is going to tell you if you need a license, depending on what you're doing in the remote sensing sphere. So next we have export controls. If you're dealing with foreign persons, foreign supply chains, or trying to launch in a foreign country, use a foreign rocket, you're dealing with export controls. Those are two agencies in the US for anything ITAR controlled. Most people have heard of the International Traffic in arms regulations, the U.S. munitions list, that's under the State Department, under the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, ddtc, and then the Export Administration Regulations, which is everything that's not on the United States Munitions List under the itar. Everything else, which is a lot of satellites and such, will be under the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security bis. So we have five core agencies that if you're in the space industry, you're going to be thinking about. If you want to put anything in space, great.
- [12:56]
Bailey Reichelt
And so in addition to those agencies which are maybe more directly related to space, and of course, ITAR and EAR are a bit broader than just space. But we also have to be thinking about government contracts if you're a US Company. And so you have to worry about all the regulations that apply to DoD contracting or contracting with NASA, et cetera. We've got to worry about investment regulations. So if you're seeking investment in the United States, you got to worry about SEC regs making sure that you are soliciting investments correctly and not violating all of those rules. And there's a lot of rules. What else? Of course, there's just commercial contracts, and there's a lot of law that goes into commercial contracting. And the space industry is a bit unique in terms of that with like hosted payload agreements and launch agreements and things like that. But that's a great overview. Bailey, what would you say is, of those regulations, which is the most important, do you think, to tackle first?
- [14:06]
Jack Shelton
Well, actually, Jack, if I were going to think big picture, I would tackle the business part first. Because if you don't have a sustainable foundation for your business, if you're out soliciting investors publicly and you're not following the securities regs, that's going to take you down way faster and harder than all this other nuance stuff. So first of all, you have to have a solid business. You need to pay your employees, you need to structure properly, you know, you need to have solid contracts in place. So have a good foundation. But while you're establishing this foundation and starting to build your technology, you need to be engineering whatever it is your business is you need to be engineering it with the regulations in mind. So when you're choosing an antenna for your spacecraft, you're thinking about what spectrum you're going to be using, or if you're going to be piggybacking off certain constellations and you're starting to negotiate those deals and get that information so that you can package it all together. Because each time you approach a regulator, you have to come prepared with lots of technical information. So these processes go hand in hand. The length of the process depends on what you're doing, but I definitely think the telecommunications process. So again, depending on what you're doing, that can be one of the longer timelines and then the launch timelines, the launch review can take a pretty good while as well. I like to say start two years ahead of your prospective launch date.
- [15:42]
Bailey Reichelt
FCC in particular is one of those things that people think they can put off for a little while, not realizing that just their choice in antenna is going to affect whether they're going to get that license or how hard it's going to be to get that license. So that's really important. I would say that export controls is one of those things that's so pervasive, it's something you have to worry about for cradle to grave. I think, truth be told, more often than not we see companies, they just get started, they don't quite have enough money sometimes in the very beginning to really allocate resources to thinking about export controls correctly. They get a little ways down the road and then they start realizing, gosh, we really need to start paying attention to this. Then they put some plans in place, they put some procedures in place. Often we help them with that, and maybe they correct a few things that they got wrong in the beginning, and then that procedure is going to grow with them over time, and it's going to be something they're going to have to think about through the entire life cycle of their company.
- [16:44]
Jack Shelton
Yeah, you know, I really should have mentioned that when I was talking about having a secure base. So what's your. If you're a U.S. person, you have a U.S. entity, you're subject to U.S. export controls. The FAA doesn't have jurisdiction over you by being a U.S. company, but export controls attach to you immediately. Right. So if you want to start an entity and your founders are foreign, you need to, from the very inception of your company, be thinking about export controls. Because you may have to segregate technology out before you can get licenses and licensing, depending on what type of license you need and whether you're going through DDTC or bis. Those can also be year long timelines depending on the sensitivity. Most are not that long, most are much shorter, but it's still a timeline and it's longer than most people expect.
- [17:37]
Bailey Reichelt
Great, thanks. I think that's a really good overview. There's a lot that we can drill down on with some future questions. I'm sure we're going to get a lot more pointed questions in the future. Thanks Bailey. That was great. And guys, if you have any other questions you'd like to ask us, please reach out. You can email space2k.com and those questions will get rattled to us and hopefully we can answer them on a future podcast. Thank.
- [18:17]
Maria Varmazes
We'Ll be right back.
- [18:23]
Dave
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- [19:18]
Maria Varmazes
Welcome back. Now, the successful landing of Firefly's Blue Ghost has us wondering, what exactly are the payloads on Blue Ghost? Well, here's a rundown for you. They've got a suite of payloads to the lunar surface. Now, 10 of those payloads are from NASA. The instruments aboard the lander will operate on the lunar surface for approximately one lunar day, which is about 14 Earth days. But some of the payloads have already racked up a few milestones during the 2.8 million mile journey that the spacecraft has traveled since it launched in January. For example, the Lunar Global Navigation Satellite System, or GNSS Receiver Experiment payload has been able to connect with the GNSS at a record breaking distance of 246,000 miles, which shows that NASA can use the same positioning systems on Earth when on the moon. Science conducted during the journey also included radiation tolerant computing through the Van Allen Belt with the Radiation Tolerant Computer System payload, and measurements of magnetic field changes in space with the Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder payload. During surface operations, NASA instruments will test and demonstrate lunar subsurface drilling technology, regolith sample collection capabilities, global navigation satellite system abilities, radiation tolerant computing and lunar dust mitigation methods. NASA says the data captured will benefit humanity by providing insights into how space, weather and other cosmic forces impact Earth. And we know that our sites, along with many others, will be firmly on the moon in the coming days. To keep up with the updates from these experiments and watching for the IM2 mission touchdown, which by the way, is expected by the end of the week, what an amazingly exciting time we live in. And that's it for T minus for March 3, 2025. Brought to you by N2K CyberWire for additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes@spare.n2k.com 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 privileged that N2K CyberWire is part of the daily routine 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 makes it easy for companies to optimize your biggest investment your people. We make you smarter about your teams while making your team smarter. Learn how@n2k.com 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 Kilpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Razas. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.
- [22:24]
Dave
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