
The Consortium for Space Mobility and ISAM Capabilities (COSMIC) is working with academia to prepare the workforce through the COSMIC Capstone Challenge.
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Maria Varmazes
You're listening to the N2K space network.
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Maria Varmazes
When we think of the future capabilities of the space industry in space, servicing, assembly and manufacturing, otherwise known as isam, is poised to make what was once thought to be impossible in space a reality. So how is the United States preparing the future workforce for what's coming? Well, COSMIC is leading the way. Welcome to T Minus deep space from N2K Networks. I'm Maria Ramazas. The Consortium for Space Mobility and ISAM Capabilities, otherwise known as cosmic, is a nationwide coalition working to invigorate a domestic ISAM capability. COSMIC has just wrapped up the first Cosmic Capstone challenge, otherwise known as the C3. And I spoke to Sita Raghavan and Joy Haying, who walked me through the C3 and the plans for its development.
Sita Raghavan
Hello, everyone. I'm Sita Raghavan. So I'm actually a professor of aerospace engineering from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. And my areas of research are in materials in extreme environments, mechanics and materials in extreme environments, looking at space, hypersonics and engines and everything that's really top on material. And so I do research and I also take care of a group of students, run a lab, come up with great ideas, and I'm serving as the Academic Caucus chair of cosmic. So that's a part of the service that I do to engage with the community in areas that are up and coming in areas of research that I'm interested in.
Joey Hein
Awesome. And I can't wait to hear more about all of that after Joey does his intro. So Joey without further ado, please tell me about yourself.
Joy Haying
Hi, my name is Joey Hein. I got a bachelor's degree in aeronautical and astronomical Engineering from Purdue University and I got a master's in space Systems Engineering from Johns Hopkins. Day to day, I do a lot of conceptual design, kind of early mission formulation work at the Aerospace Corporation, working as a space systems architecture engineer, supporting our Concurrent Design center, and got tied in with isam, so that's in Space Servicing, assembly and Manufacturing a few years ago and GoT looped into COSMIC, which is the Consortium for Space Mobility and ISAM Capabilities Nested acronyms there. And specifically, hopefully, well done. The Workforce Development focus area and the Academia Caucus with sita, engaging with students, trying to figure out how to kind of reshape how students think about space missions in general, but really how to figure out how to engage ISAM and get ISAM into programs. So specifically working this year with the cosmic capstone challenge, C3, we call it, where we've been working with numerous universities and a few high schools to provide a prompt for a conceptual design for the space mission.
Joey Hein
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
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
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
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
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
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
Yeah, go ahead.
Sita Raghavan
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
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
I would hope so.
Joy Haying
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
We will be right back.
Dave
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Joey Hein
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
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
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
So you worked with Shasta High School. Was that in California? Is that one of the high schools you worked with?
Sita Raghavan
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
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
Wow.
Joy Haying
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
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
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
Sita and Joey, I just want to make sure I give you both an opportunity to share any last thoughts with.
Maria Varmazes
The audience before we close out today.
Joey Hein
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
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
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
So great. Joey and Sita, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.
Sita Raghavan
Thank you.
Joy Haying
Foreign.
Maria Varmazes
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Podcast Summary: The Consortium for Space Mobility and ISAM Capabilities Episode: T-Minus Space Daily Host: Maria Varmazes Release Date: May 24, 2025
In this episode of T-Minus Space Daily, host Maria Varmazes introduces listeners to the Consortium for Space Mobility and ISAM Capabilities (COSMIC). COSMIC is a nationwide coalition dedicated to enhancing domestic capabilities in Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM). The primary goal is to stimulate workforce development and foster collaboration among industry, academia, and research organizations to propel ISAM initiatives forward.
Maria delves into COSMIC's recent accomplishments, notably the completion of the first Cosmic Capstone Challenge (C3). She interviews two key figures involved in the initiative:
Sita Raghavan ([02:37]): A professor of aerospace engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Sita oversees research in materials under extreme environments and serves as the Academic Caucus Chair of COSMIC. She emphasizes the importance of COSMIC in uniting multidisciplinary experts to advance ISAM capabilities.
Joy Haying ([03:33]): Holding a master's in Space Systems Engineering from Johns Hopkins, Joy works as a space systems architecture engineer at the Aerospace Corporation. She focuses on integrating ISAM into early mission formulation and leading the Workforce Development focus area within COSMIC.
The conversation highlights the inherently multidisciplinary nature of ISAM, requiring expertise in automation, robotics, materials science, physics, and engineering. Sita Raghavan ([05:08]) underscores how COSMIC has successfully amalgamated professionals from diverse backgrounds to create a cohesive effort towards developing ISAM standards and educational programs. She notes:
"COSMIC is really what glues us together. [...] we've managed to get a whole bunch of people coming together working on areas of research, product development, workforce development, you name it." ([05:08])
Sita discusses the current state of academia in supporting ISAM:
"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." ([07:23])
She points out the necessity for a national strategy to ensure comprehensive coverage of all ISAM facets, preventing any critical areas from being overlooked in workforce training.
Joy Haying ([09:07]) elaborates on the design and impact of the Cosmic Capstone Challenge:
"We really gave students an open-ended prompt. [...] the winning team from Cal State LA Space Bender was literally just bending wire in space. It was very simple." ([12:52])
The C3 encourages students to conceptualize payloads for small satellite buses, fostering creativity without the constraints of existing technological limitations. By collaborating with industry partners like David Barnhart of USC and Arcasys, students receive technical specifications and mentorship, bridging the gap between theoretical design and practical application.
The program extends beyond universities, involving high school teams such as those from Shasta High School. Sita remarks on the enthusiasm and innovative thinking displayed by these younger participants:
"It's necessary to think out of the box like that and help us as well." ([12:39])
Joy adds that high school teams are actively building prototypes, with students engaging in hands-on activities like welding metal structures, showcasing the program's effectiveness in igniting early interest in ISAM careers.
Looking ahead, Joy Haying ([20:51]) outlines plans to expand the Cosmic Capstone Challenge by introducing specialized tracks:
This segmentation allows students to focus on specific aspects of ISAM that align with their expertise and interests, offering flexibility for larger institutions to undertake more complex projects while providing smaller teams with manageable challenges.
As the episode wraps up, both Sita and Joy emphasize the ongoing growth and the need for broader academic participation:
"COSMIC is still growing and we do need more academic participants. [...] it's so, it's so, so many different ideas." ([23:20] - Sita Raghavan)
They invite universities, student clubs, and interested individuals to engage with COSMIC and contribute to the evolving landscape of ISAM.
Joy concludes with an optimistic outlook:
"The future is bright. The first year was very successful but definitely still learning and growing." ([24:28])
Sita Raghavan ([05:08]):
"COSMIC is really what glues us together. [...] we've managed to get a whole bunch of people coming together working on areas of research, product development, workforce development, you name it."
Joy Haying ([12:52]):
"We really gave students an open-ended prompt. [...] the winning team from Cal State LA Space Bender was literally just bending wire in space. It was very simple."
Sita Raghavan ([07:23]):
"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."
Joy Haying ([24:28]):
"The future is bright. The first year was very successful but definitely still learning and growing."
This episode of T-Minus Space Daily offers an in-depth look into COSMIC's efforts to cultivate the next generation of ISAM experts, highlighting the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and early educational engagement in shaping the future of space mobility and manufacturing.