Alice Carruth (8:05)

Maria they experienced a delay to their first launch attempt. Adam Gilmour posted on LinkedIn had a few issues overnight with a power system and a connection on the launch tower means we didn't get to fill the rocket in time for this morning's launch. Currently okay to hit tomorrow morning subject to wind. They're currently gearing up for another launch.

Maria Varmazas (8:22)

Attempt shortly to that is a bummer, but all the best for them for tomorrow. Anything else?

Alice Carruth (8:27)

For today, XenoPower has raised $50 million in a series B funding round. You can read more about that and any of the other stories mentioned throughout today's show by following the links in our show notes. Those links can also be found on our website space.n2k.com just click on today's episode title.

Maria Varmazas (8:44)

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 like to hear from you. Just send us an email@spacenn2k.com or send us a note through our website and we can connect about building a program to meet your goals.

Dave (9:16)

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Maria Varmazas (10:32)

Our guest today is Paul Thomas, Accenture's managing director and global lead of Space Innovation Technology. Paul and I spoke about new research findings released by Accenture.

Paul Thomas (10:46)

We did a survey last year with I think 1300 executives across major companies in North America, in Europe and in Asia Pacific. And the idea was to understand how these enterprises and these executives are looking at space technology, how they're incorporating it today, if they are and if they're not, you know, what they're thinking about for the future or if they're not thinking about it at all. So it's kind of to get this idea about where does it sit in most executives eyes and strategies for their companies. And if you think about the growth of the space industry, I mean, everyone's been talking about how much the space economy is changing and the rise of cubesats. The amount of money that's been invested here. If we think about where we are today, we're approaching what, 10,000 satellites in orbit right now. I think the predictions are something like 60,000 by 2030. That's only five years away from now. And 1.8 trillion dollar economy in the next 10 years. The amount of investments have been immense, right? I mean, we're looking at over $325 billion in investment in the past 15, 15, 16 years. So there's been such a huge amount of money that's come into the industry. A huge amount of startups and new players looking at it as well as the traditional players keep doing what they're doing. But also look at this emerging space economy and look at these trends happening and trying to understand, well, what does that mean for them and how do they potentially shift, change, adapt, you know, evolve or keep the leading ground that they have. So I think the report is trying to explain some of that and from the actual, you know, the words and the research that we've done with these executives and I think really interesting kind of takeaways from it, you know, that folks who hope folks get when they read it, you know, number one is that 81% of leaders that we interviewed, so that's out of, you know, out of all of these folks said that space technology is vital to the growth of their companies. That's incredible. You know, if we did that survey 10 years ago, I'd be surprised if you got 10% of executives saying that, you know, so 80, 81% is huge. I think the other bit that was really stark on the back of it for me was actually only 18% of companies are really integrating it or working with it in earnest. You know, we have a good percentage around 30%. I think it's 31%, if I be exact, that are, I guess, piloting, you know, experimenting, doing POCs with space technology. So that's, I mean, so I guess in total we're looking at 50% are doing something with space technology. But if only 80% are really using it, that leaves a huge amount of the market untapped, really, in terms of real implementations and real applications of the technology. So I think it really opens up, you know, the, the vast potential that space is on, as in even today. And that's not even thinking about as space technology is evolving, what other capabilities and use cases and things are going to be emerging on the back of it. So I think it's, it's incred. And hopefully when people do read it, you know, the idea is for that, you know, for there to be, I guess, a realization of that, of a need for every company out there to really think about where the space fit for them, you know, what is their space strategy. And the company should be thinking about, thinking about developing. And you know, there's a technology strategy, the business strategy, et cetera, but there should be a space strategy or space should be a component of each of those, you know, strategies that they're putting together for them to understand how it fits within their own business.

Maria Varmazas (14:04)

Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating to hear that gap, because you're totally right. I think not that long ago people would have said that the gap maybe would have been due to an awareness issue, which I don't think anyone thinks there's an awareness issue as much anymore anyway. So what would explain that capabilities gap? Is it just a lack of maturity here or just people are looking for. What are people looking for there?

Paul Thomas (14:30)

Well, I think there's a few components to that. One of them I think is obviously there's been, and I don't know if this is a fact or a preconception, but the cost is a question mark here. And how expensive is implementing space technology? And I think as with any new technology or relatively new technology as it's coming into mass adoption or starting that journey to mass adoption is there's only a few players with capabilities, and when there's only a few players with capabilities, and then you have kind of very specific and bespoke solutions around it. It can be expensive to purchase that. And so I think what's maybe been a barrier to some of the adoption, or I guess, more earnest adoption and scaling of the technologies is folks that have been looking at the technology but not really understood the business case behind it, not really thought potentially in the right ways about the overall impact of employing the technology and where it can fit. I've seen people look at things in a very sort of, you know, imagine the horse with the blinkers on. You know, this is how I'm going to use the technology, and this is how I want to play with it. And they play with it, and this is great. And it does what I want it to do. And then it comes to, well, how do I scale that up? And what does the business case look like? And it doesn't work. And it's because you've not really thought about the bigger picture. Just looking at Earth observation technology, there's so many applications you can have for Earth observation for any one industry that if you try and use it for just one thing, you're kind of missing a whole portion of that business case. Right, which could actually make it viable. So I think there's that component of looking at it in the right way and as I said, incorporating into the strategy, which maybe hasn't been done in the way it could have been done and hopefully will be in the future. I think the second thing is then those costs, and as we have now more capabilities arriving, more companies providing different services and solutions, more choice, is it anything? There's more choice, there's more availability, there's more types of solutions. It means there's more potential that there's a solution for you at the right price point. Then I think the third thing is that there's now been a lot more understanding and applications of the space technology in certain industries. So rather than saying, but again, Earth observation can solve all of these things across all these industries. Well, actually, if you employ it, you need to think about how, what are you integrating it to? What are those legacy applications, how are you interpreting that data, what's the AI and the algorithms that you're going to employ in it to extract the right information from that data, the right markers you're going to use, et cetera. And I think now there's lots and lots of companies that are looking at it very specifically for the industries and therefore developing solutions that can take this information and adapt it to create specific solutions for these specific industries. And that's where the key magic is going to Be it's actually real world use cases and real world applications that benefit these industries in these ways. Not this one size fits all I.

Maria Varmazas (17:17)

Was going to say. In that way the ideas start to proliferate and. Yeah, go ahead.

Paul Thomas (17:20)

The other I think is skills. Right. And the talent and having people that have the experience and understanding to be able to use that, they use that data. So I think there's a skill gap too, which is a big one and a fearful one for companies sometimes to think about how to invest in it because that's not, sometimes they need to think about having whole teams to be able to support this and how do they do that, how do they upskill it? Where do they find those folks if these are new areas for them? So that's also a challenge. So hopefully what the report does is help bring those things to life a little bit and help companies understand that. One, if you're building this track, you're building this vision, what are the three, I guess key things that companies should be thinking about? So you know, if we say.

Maria Varmazas (18:04)

Yeah, I was going to say you've sort of started touching on those, but I'd love for us to go over those maybe a little more formally like 1, 2, 3, what those takeaways should be.

Paul Thomas (18:12)

Yeah, so the three things we've identified really. So number one is really develop a comprehensive vision, develop a strategy basically. And so it's thinking about things, you know, enterprise wide across your company. It's holistic and it's about real world applications and viable applications. Second thing is focus on talent development. And so it's how do you identify what talent you have internally that could be developed to be able to support what you're trying to do or what you need to do in terms of bringing talent in, how do you upskill? How do you bring in the right folks or if not, how do you work with the right types of partners or players that can complement you with those resources? Which is kind of linked to the third thing which is about activating the ecosystem because that space ecosystem is huge and it's really varied and it's actually quite complex. And if you're coming first time into this and understanding well what who can help me, there's thousands of companies that can offer some component of a solution and so it can be quite, can be quite scary for a company to look at that and go, well I don't, I have no idea where to start or to jump on the first company that says well I can do that and then maybe not realize that actually they can't do all of what you need. So I think building that ecosystem of partners, collaborating with the space technology ecosystem. So not. And you know, the space companies, the established players, as I said, some of the new, you know, the startups developing solutions out there, even the data and analytics players out there that are building some of these bespoke algorithms, right. Space agencies, I mean, most space agencies looking at how do they help develop the space ecosystem, how do they ensure that space is now proliferating into business and businesses are understanding how to adopt it as well. So actually building relationships there can also be beneficial. Some of the space agencies even have upskilling programs as well that they can tap into too, at the same time. So I think those are kind of the three things that we're advising that companies should do.

Maria Varmazas (20:01)

Fantastic. Well, thank you for going over those. And I'm curious what you think you will see in a year, any shifts or small or large, any predictions on that front?

Paul Thomas (20:12)

Well, I have to be careful what I say here now, don't I? So, no, I think the whole geopolitical landscape right now is very volatile, as everybody knows, and that is leading to a huge conversation around, obviously, defense, defense capabilities for nations specifically. And given, I think some more recent developments, there's Europe in particular, I'm based in Europe, so I see this probably more firsthand is Europe looking at sovereign capabilities to be able to do things that they need to do. And so I think that what's going to be interesting over the next few years, really a decade, is actually seeing how one, we're seeing already increased potential spending in those areas, which means that there's going to be more spend happening there and then more development in the defense arena and more employment of space technology, I guess, is a key component of that. So, you know, from Earth observation to space domain awareness to, you know, communications and connectivity and resiliency to security, you know, all of these different things. And space is going to play a much bigger role in defense, I think, for pretty much everybody. So I can see that, you know, in a year's time when we're talking again, I think we'll have seen some more moving movement in that arena, for sure. I think the other thing that, you know, there seems to be a lot more happening around implementations of space technology for governmental organizations to help with things like managing fragile ecosystems, for example, with helping, you know, from the sustainability side of things, with managing, you know, land, you know, agriculture, or with supporting, you know, from a natural disasters perspective as well. So I think there's going to be a lot more movement in those areas. What we've seen just even this year with, you know, unfortunately in California, in Spain with the floods, for example, you know, countless countries, we've seen so many natural disasters happening now where, you know, we know that if the Earth observation capabilities, you know, combined with other, you know, geo and weather information, et cetera, I mean, there's so much more, I think that could have been done to help and prevent in some of those cases. That's definitely an area I'm really interested to see progress.

Maria Varmazas (22:42)

We'll be right back.

Dave (22:51)

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Maria Varmazas (23:32)

Welcome back. What's that saying you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Well, definitely do not tell the engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California because they've revived a set of thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft that had been considered inoperable since 2004. I mean, that is some engineering feat, right? Not only have they been out of commission for over 20 years, but, you know, Voyager 1 is currently hurtling through interstellar space at speeds of around 35,000 miles an hour. Some 15.5 mil. No, excuse me. Some 15.5 billion miles away from the Earth. So it's not like they could get a hands on with the problem. Yeah, not to mention that many of the engineers working on this have probably never even seen the Voyager spacecraft in person because you remember it launched in 1977. NASA says fixing the thrusters required some, quote, creativity. No kidding, right. And some risk, of course. But the team wanted to have them available as a backup to a set of active thrusters whose fuel tubes are experiencing a buildup of residue that could cause them to stop working as early as this fall. And the engineers did manage to get the thrusters working before the deadline of May 4, when the earthbound antenna that sends commands to Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 went offline for months of upgrades. So, honestly, seriously, bravo teams. And a note about those antenna upgrades from May 4, 2025 through February 2026, Deep Space Station 43, which is a 230 foot wide antenna in Canberra, Australia, and that is part of NASA's Deep Space Network is undergoing upgrades and it will be offline for most of that time with brief periods of operation in Aug and December. So yes, the Deep Space Network has three complexes equally spaced around the globe in Goldstone, California, Madrid, Spain and Australia, of course, all to ensure constant contact with spacecraft as the Earth rotates. It must be noted that DSS43, the one in Australia, is the only dish with enough signal power to send commands to the Voyagers, so we expect it may be some time till we know how the long dormant thrusters continue to perform. That's it for T minus for May 15, 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 Kilpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Razes. Thanks for listening. I'll see you tomorrow.

Paul Thomas (26:48)

T minus.

Dave (27:02)

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