Joey Hein (4:43)

Awesome. Well, thank you both so much for joining me today. And as our audience can probably surmise, we're going to be talking about cosmic and also C3 and just how things have been going because it's a really, really cool program and it's very exciting to see the progress there. So, Sita, I'm going to go back to you if you can, sort of, from your viewpoint, from where you stand, how is Cosmic going? I mean, what has been the progress in the last year? What have you been seeing?

Sita Raghavan (5:08)

Well, I'm really excited about Cosmic because first of all, it addresses something in a really growing area, industry focus. I mean, it is something that's up and coming. And in a short time of 1 1/2 years or so, we've got together a group of people who have been working for many years on topics that are all relevant to isam, and that's in space servicing, assembly and manufacturing. Right. And these people have been working individually on various areas. And because ISAM is so multidisciplinary, imagine having this disparate group of people working in areas. Cosmic is really what glues us together. And in this short time of one and a half years, we've managed to get a whole bunch of people coming together working on areas of research, product development, workforce development, you name it. And we started thinking about all of that. And that's really important right now because we are in the stage of building up this whole concept of ISAM and all that's needed for it, standardization, what's needed for students to learn to be able to contribute to isam. So these are things that we need to start building from scratch and bringing the right people together is what Cosmic has done. So I'm pretty excited that we've managed to accomplish that in such a short time to get everybody together. But we've got a long way to go in terms of the amount of what's needed right now to get ISAM off the ground. And I think we've got the energy and excitement to do it.

Joey Hein (6:54)

That is a very exciting development. And also, I mean, honestly, ISAM itself is such a fascinating field. And being in academia at this time, where, as you said, you know, we're trying to figure out what kinds of programs are needed to support this, this fast growing new frontier. Are, are we at the point where we have even the beginnings of frameworks? Like, where are the conversations in academia right now? What. Yeah. Can you give me sort of, if I was a fly on the wall, what would be happening?

Sita Raghavan (7:23)

Well, I could add to that, I think in academia right now. Definitely there are, you know, there's an existing history of a lot of background and, you know, courses that have been supporting what needs to go into isam. But we need more targeted topics and focused areas that just address the ISAM needs and sort of bringing that together so that it's going to be able to train a student who's able to contribute to all aspects of isam. And when I said multidisciplinary, I'm talking automation, robotics, materials manufacturing, you name it. It's physics, it's science, it's engineering, all of it comes together. So all of these are pieces all over the place. And getting course content and getting the people in the room who know what the course content is that would help this focus area grow. That's, I think, a big deal. And that's what academia is trying to address right now. And, you know, the way we're doing it, of course, individual institutions are starting to see, well, here's how we can contribute. We've got these expertise and here's, here's what we can do in terms of course content. But really we need an overall strategy for the nation so that we are really addressing all aspects of ISAM and that we are not missing some focus area, some workforce area that falls behind. Because without each one of that piece, every piece is important to get that successful mission for ISAM going.

Joy Haying (9:07)

I think that the Cosmo Capstone Challenge was really designed you know, my co lead with workforce development, Jacob Rome, the past few years have been leading this concept called the Oral Manufacturing Initiative. And so we had been more ad hoc, but really trying to engage students on sort of this high level payload concept design to figure out, hey, you're a student, you haven't been in the industry for 10, 15 years, what are ideas you have without think you don't have the concept of limitations right now. Right. So what from a pure function and utility standpoint, what can you think of? Right. And so, you know, specifically with C3 this year, kind of taking Jacob's program and putting it under the cosmic banner, we really gave students an open ended prompt. You know, just design some sort of payload to be hosted about a small satellite bus, you know, try to do three or more operations autonomously. But besides that, you know, we can say, you know, try to support, you know, isam. It doesn't, doesn't have to be just servicing or just assembly or just manufacturing. You know, it can be whatever you want to do. Right. And so like Seth is saying, it's not just targeted for aeronautical or astronomical students, but it's also targeted at mechanical engineers or electrical engineers or computer engineers that are working on vision systems, things like that. Right. So just to add on what Seth is saying, it's a multidisciplinary problem and we're trying to target it from those different angles. Right. And doing that by giving an open prompt this year and then next year dividing the C3 challenge into four unique prompts focused on orbital manufacturing, assembly, lunar operations, orbital servicing, as well as another kind of more on service assembly system, robotic assembly. And so by doing that, we're directly engaging with what's Ethan's saying as well, engaging with industry and academia specifically, rather than just hosting it on an example payload bus. We're actually working with David Barnhart of USC at University of Southern California, who also runs a company called arcasys. And so we're actually working with them to get interface control documents so that we can send actual technical specifications to the students, give them CAD renderings so they can actually see here's directly what you're mounting onto, how can you fit within this volume, how can you meet the power requirements here, but still giving them the flexibility to design from there. But just saying like, hey, here's your baseline, go off, have some crazy fun ideas, things like that.

Joey Hein (11:27)

I was just gonna say the multidisciplinary angle that you both have mentioned, it also really aligns well with what we're hearing from the Industry about how much we need these different approaches and we need to be thinking about application outside of sort of the standard silos and breaking out of those silos entirely. So go ahead, Sita.

Maria Varmazes (11:43)

Yeah, go ahead.

Sita Raghavan (11:44)

Oh yeah. I wanted to say Joey's and Joey and Jacob have done this immense effort and I think one thing that's like, you know, we got to realize is that students out there, they don't even know what ISAM is. And all of us professors are going to talk about, you know, these multidisciplinary areas and it kind of goes over the top of everyone's head. But you know, that challenge, it does it. You know, you can take anyone from high school and they now know exactly what ISAM is. And you can't get people interested in doing the courses for it or thinking of a career in it if they don't know what it is that they're going to get into. So I think just the knowledge of what ISAM is and getting that across in simple ways just through this project and this hands on effort just gave everyone involved an idea of this could be something I want to be part of as part of my career.

Joy Haying (12:39)

Yeah. And to add onto that, I mean, some of the ideas we're seeing here are, you know, they're beautiful in their simplicity. Right. Like you have, you obviously have crazy wild out there ideas that may take many years to develop, but you also have.

Joey Hein (12:52)

I would hope so.

Joy Haying (12:53)

Yeah. Right, right. But you also have these more near term ideas where it's like, oh, I didn't think of that. Right. Like the winning team from Cal State LA Space Bender was literally just bending wire in space. It was very simple. You know, you don't have to focus on any complex welding or how do you, how do you deal with metallic powders in space or anything? It's literally, hey, if we can get this filament up there, how can we just bend a structure into space? You don't have to worry about the launch environment, you don't have to worry about launch loads. And so those sorts of ideas where students come in with no background on how a notional space mission works and they say, oh, this could work, it's pretty simple, it's a small payload, whatever. And then looking at those ideas and figuring out, hey, how can we take this concept and connect you with, you know, people connect. You know, the big thing about program is we connect each student team with a mentor from industry from, or government or academia that is directly part of cosmic. So, you know, they're meeting with these mentors every week or two. And so you get, you get these ideas where depending on a mentor's expertise, they kind of can push or guide the students different ways. But you get a lot of really creative ideas, really, really fun, exciting ideas and then you get ideas that you know are just almost ingenious in their simplicity and you know, more from an application standpoint are really great.

Maria Varmazes (14:16)

We will be right back.

Dave (14:23)

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Joey Hein (15:48)

Yeah, I was going to ask if you all had any favorites from what you saw because the C3 just happened, didn't it? So this is fresh in both of your minds. I would love to hear about because you just mentioned the Bender one just made me think of Futurama. So I'm just. That's where my head's at right now. But that's really cool. I love that idea and I know there were a lot of really fascinating ideas and I'd love if there are any other favorites that you have. If you want to walk me through any of those, that'd be great.

Joy Haying (16:16)

Yeah, I mean a lot of different unique ideas obviously. You know, a lot of like over debris missions as you see typically. But I think, you know, Sita, if you want to talk about some of like the high school teams that you were supporting, I think that was another spot where you're seeing, you know, maybe not as much, much analysis behind it, but you're seeing these really creative like rover concepts and things like that. If you want to speak to what Shasta was up for.

Sita Raghavan (16:39)

Yeah, I think, I think for me it was like just, you know, I managed to sit in on Shasta's presentations for the ISAM projects and I think the biggest thing for me is I loved all the ideas, but what I really enjoyed was just seeing how they are all energized by these ideas, and then they start troubleshooting and they think about all that could go wrong. I think that whole process of thinking through, and every team had that. So I'm just excited about all of their projects. And it's like Joey said as well, the ideas are sometimes so simple. And it tends to be that because we know what the problems are or what the environment can create, we tend to limit ourselves sometimes. And just being open like those students, they're not concerned about some of these things. And it's necessary to think out of the box like that and help us as well. So I really enjoyed all of their topics.

Joey Hein (17:43)

So you worked with Shasta High School. Was that in California? Is that one of the high schools you worked with?

Sita Raghavan (17:48)

Oh, well, I managed to listen to some of their projects. Yeah. And, you know, we have the. In the academic caucus, the academia caucus. We have representatives from different universities, colleges, and high schools, and Shasta is one of them. And Brian, who's the teacher of the. And in charge of the high school students over there, has been really a great mentor to his students. And you can see that they all kind of start to realize whatever they're doing is really important. People want the answers. Yeah. So we get to be part of that. He helps set things up so that we can listen to the students, and they get to get in touch with industry as well as people like me in academia. And just seeing external people look at their ideas and give them feedback and are excited about that, that really brings up their excitement levels, too.

Joy Haying (18:53)

Yeah. Brett Barnes and Brian Grigsby from Chesky High School have done just a phenomenal job. You know, it's not just concept development. You know, we gave the option for teams depending on, you know, to be flexible with program requirements. You know, we said, hey, if you want to build a prototype, go for it. And who's actually, you know, these students are, like, welding in high school. They're actually, like, building, like, metal prototypes that you're seeing. So that was really exciting.

Dave (19:16)

Wow.

Joy Haying (19:16)

And I mean, just some of the engagement we saw, even in just this first year, was fantastic. Professor Sarah Lego from Penn State, we had spoken with her last spring and said, hey, we're thinking about doing this. We gave her our draft material. She was like, hey, I have this quick turn summer program. We'll see if the students like it. We'll kind of test it out here. And then she ended up signing up 10 teams, it was like 66 students, I think all from Penn State. So when we had showcase last month, we gave two in person location options. So if you're kind of more in the western US you could come down to LA to the Aerospace Corporation, present in person, but then also get lab tours and see what we're up to. And then for the students like the Penn State teams, for example, they drove out to NASA Goddard in Maryland and got to present there, but they also got to tour the facilities and see real hardware in real space labs. So it was really exciting.

Joey Hein (20:10)

That is so cool. My mind's just a little blown thinking that we have high school students working on ISAM projects. That is genuinely just really impressive and speaks so well to how much academia, the industry, the space community knows that this is really where we need to be. Building workforce expertise and certainly letting younger people understand like this is a really important area where they can really move the needle very quickly is fascinating. Joy, you mentioned that there's already planning for next year and some changes afoot, some really exciting developments. I think you mentioned a few of them, but can you just maybe go over them for me just so I can understand what we're looking forward for next year?

Joy Haying (20:51)

Yeah, so next year we're trying to really expand in terms of numbers. Obviously we had over 200 students. We had between 230, 240 total students. And we're really planning on growing. We're talking with a lot of universities right now, getting feedback from the mentors, getting feedback from the judges that served in our competition, as well as some of the advisors figuring out what worked well and what didn't. And so part of that is we're really looking at adopting more of a almost like champion type system where we have four tracks. So you have orbital manufacturing and assembly, you have kind of a lunar oriented surface operations, you have orbital servicing, so kind of like a refueling type mission. And then you have an actual in space robotic assembly. And so for each of these, we're working with industry and government partners to get sort of a main point person to run each one of these. So at our Convergence event next month in Los Angeles, we're having each of these champions kind of go up and speak about the importance of each of these topics, why we're dividing up into four tracks. And then if you're a student next year, you can look and say, oh, which one of these four looks most interesting to me? Which one's most applicable to the program I'm in? Maybe they're choosing that maybe the professor's choosing that we're willing to let them sort it out too. We want to just maintain that flexibility and then planning on giving more guidance into, hey, if you have a bigger team, maybe this challenge is a little harder. Maybe doing full scale lunar operations, designing a rover, designing sort of a con ops of what you're trying to accomplish, maybe that's a bit larger scale and maybe doing more of just like a simple payload design that may be a little smaller scale. Right. So we want to be flexible in terms of maybe a larger university. Maybe they have funding to build prototype, maybe smaller universities, they don't. Right. So we're not trying to lock any students into any one path, but giving them the option to say, hey, if your expertise is in envision systems or expertise is in propulsion, there's different areas you can go into that makes sense. And again, giving the advisors, giving the professors, you know, some flexibility so that they can, you know, meet with their, you know, meet with their department and say, hey, here's where we want to go and not lock them into, you know, one path, but give them those options.

Joey Hein (23:08)

Sita and Joey, I just want to make sure I give you both an opportunity to share any last thoughts with.

Maria Varmazes (23:13)

The audience before we close out today.

Joey Hein (23:15)

Why don't we go Sita and Joey, in that order, if there are any thoughts you want to share before we head out?

Sita Raghavan (23:20)

Yeah, I do want to say that, you know, cosmic is still growing and we do need more academic participants. So we want to kind of make sure that everyone out there knows that this is a place where you can really contribute. And there are so many. I mean, this is a field that is growing so rapidly. It really is a community of people coming together that it's so, it's so, so many different ideas with so many different ideas. And we are all open to these ideas. So, you know, the, the. There isn't one area. Again, it's multidisciplinary. We're talking about damage, radiation damage, materials, automation, robotics, whatever your interest is, you're going to be able to find something that you know about that's going to be relevant to isam. So consider thinking about putting your group together and looking at the challenges or getting your, if you're a student, get your faculty involved and if your faculty gets your students involved and be part of this exciting group.

Joy Haying (24:28)

And then, yeah, for me, I think just like Sita was saying, it's only the first year we've been doing this. We've seen a lot of growth, but this is by no means a finished product. So looking for feedback on C3 looking for more teams. If you're part of a student club or part of a university or have colleagues that work in a university, you can go to cosmicspace.org c3. You can find all our information there, provide feedback. You can find emails, reach out to myself or Jacob Rome, the workforce development co lead. And yeah, I think the future is bright. The first year was very successful but definitely still learning and growing. So thank you.

Joey Hein (25:05)

So great. Joey and Sita, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

Sita Raghavan (25:09)

Thank you.

Joy Haying (25:14)

Foreign.

Maria Varmazes (25:20)

That'S it for T Minus Deep Space brought to you by N2K CyberWire. We would love to know what you think of this podcast. You can email us@space2k.com or submit the survey in the show notes. Your feedback ensures we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. N2K Senior Producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliott Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliott Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ivan. Peter Kilby is our publisher and I'm your host Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you.

Dave (26:32)

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