← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
USSF to expand payload processing facility access.
00:28:17
Astrotech Space Operations to support NSSL SV processing. Firefly’s FLTA006 scrubbed. China is working on a traffic management system. And more.
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Transcript45 lines
- [00:02]
Maria Varmazas
You're listening to the N2K space network.
- [00:11]
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- [00:54]
Maria Varmazas
Today is April 28, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazas and this is T minus.
- [01:02]
David Schleeper
T minus 20 seconds.
- [01:13]
Maria Varmazas
The Spaceflight Laboratory has completed the assembly of the Aspera Space Astrophysics Microsatellite Bus 4 AST Space Mobile to implement best practices between satellite and ground based optical, infrared and radio astronomy observations. China is working on a traffic management system to better organize satellite placement and operations. Firefly Aerospace scrubs the message In a booster mission for Lockheed Martin, USSF awards a NSSL Space Vehicle Processing Commercial Solutions Opening Contract to astrotech Space Oper. Our guest today is David Schleeper, our SNH Project Manager, and David and I spoke about spaceport congestion and nuclear payload facilities, so stick around to find out what his research has unveiled on those issues. It's also our top story today, coincidentally so it is a very timely chat. Happy Monday everybody. I am back from vacation. It's good to be back with you. Let's dive into today's intel briefing, shall we? The United States Space Force's Space Systems Command has awarded a National Security Space Launch Space Vehicle Processing Commercial Solutions opening contract to AstroTech Space Operations and with this contract, USSF will expand commercial space vehicle processing capacity for NSSL missions at Vandenberg Space force base by 2028. Col. Dan Heilander, director of operations integration for SSC's Assured Access to Space Program Executive Office, says this $77.5 million CSO award is a public private partnership for cost sharing of much needed launch infrastructure to support the increased demands of both military and commercial launch activities. This expanded processing facility will support national security space priorities, improving USSF's responsive and resilient launch capabilities for the warfighter. Astrotech is a Lockheed Martin subsidiary based in Florida. It is already the primary provider of payload stor and satellite processing services for spacecraft arriving at both eastern and western launch ranges before liftoff. With this new contract, USSF hopes to alleviate issues with access to secure payload processing facilities, which are particularly strained with the increased rideshare programs we were here at T minus all glued to our screens this morning for our partners@nasaspaceflight.com's coverage of the Firefly Aerospace Alpha launch. The Alpha Flight, a 006 message in a booster mission, was due to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base for their first in a series of dedicated missions for Lockheed Martin. And after a number of holds which stretched across the full launch window, the launch was scrubbed at the last minute. Firefly shared that the scrub was due to an issue with the ground support equipment. There are multiple backup launch windows for the mission this week, so we do hope to see the Alpha rocket back on the pad quickly. Chinese media says the China National Space Administration, known as cnsa, is working on a traffic management system to better organize satellite placement and operations. Meng Lingjie, director of CNSA's Earth Observation and Data center, says that without it, overlapping projects and repetitive competition could seriously hurt the industry's development. China reportedly has 58 satellite factories either operating under construction or in the planning stages. Some estimates state that the country's satellite production is expected to exceed 5,000 units annually by the end of this year. In addition, CNSA announced that it would set up a Commercial Space Innovation alliance, working with industry organizations and companies to tackle challenges such as the use of resources, regulatory standards and poor coordination in the commercial space sector. CNSA says the main goal of establishing the alliance is to ensure the commercial space industry can develop quickly and saf AST Space Mobile has signed a coordination agreement with the United States National Science foundation to implement best practices between satellite communications and ground based optical, infrared and radio astronomy observations. AST Space Mobile has committed to collaborating with nsf, its major facilities, and the broader US Astronomy community to mitigate any potential impact on ground based astronomical facilities. These efforts will include adopting measures recommended by the International Astronomical Union's Dark and Quiet Skies Initiative, such as reducing satellite brightness and providing accurate real time satellite positioning data to observatories. Canada's Space Flight Laboratory, known as sfl, has completed the assembly of the ASPERA Space Astrophysics Microsatellite Bus. The spacecraft is ready for integration with the FAR UV ASPERA telescope being built by the University of Arizona. ASPERA is a NASA Astrophysics mission that seeks to understand the formation and evolution of galaxies through FAR UV observations of the matter surrounding those galaxies, known as the Circumgalactic Medium. Ooh. The mission is managed by the University of Arizona's Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory with funding from the NASA Astrophysics Pioneers Program. SFL will perform instrument spacecraft integration and testing at its Toronto facility later this year, with launch slated for early 2026. That concludes today's top five stories. N2K senior producer Alice Carruth, who was so wonderfully on the mic for me last week. Thank you Alice. She has more on the other stories that we are keeping an eye on.
- [07:50]
Alice Carruth
Alice welcome back, Maria. We have four additional links in the Selected Readings section of today's Show Notes. The first covers more on the Space Foundation Space workforce for tomorrow's agreement with ISU. The next is on NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies Lab, which has had its lease canceled in New York City. And then there are two leadership appointment announcements, first for the South Australia Space Industry Centre and Axiom Space to read up about.
- [08:16]
Maria Varmazas
And please remind us where we can find all of those links.
- [08:19]
Alice Carruth
Links to all the stories covered throughout the show can be found on our website, space.n2k.com in addition to the Episode show notes, just click on the daily episode title to find the full show page.
- [08:30]
Maria Varmazas
Hi T minus 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 us daily on Instagram. That is where we post videos and pictures from events to excursions and even some behind the scenes treats. Links are in the show notes. Hope you'll join us there.
- [09:10]
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- [09:46]
Unnamed Expert
Foreign.
- [09:54]
Maria Varmazas
In keeping with today's theme of spaceport infrastructure, our guest today is David Schleeper, RS&H Project Manager. RS&H has recently looked into the issues with spaceport congestion and lack of nuclear payload facilities. David shared some insights into what they found.
- [10:14]
Unnamed Expert
So just to give you some background, obviously everybody's aware the US as well as China has some very big plans for space economy development, cislunar sustaining people on the moon as well as visiting Mars. And to do all of those things, to do all the things we want to do in space, it requires more energy than just what solar panels can produce, either because of dust storms or you're on the dark side of the moon where there is no sun or pure distance from the sun. A solar loses its, its ability to provide what we need. So we have to look at other options. And that's really where nuclear shines bright. The world of nuclear space, in my view, is really broken down into three segments. One is surface fission power or just vision power being produced in space. So what you would see at your nuclear power plant, in whatever state you might be in producing electricity, but done in space. The next one would be just radioisotopes, which is what the US has done numerous times over the years. Radioisotope in space producing heat for an RTG or some other need for heat in space. And the third would be for some sort of thermal or electric propulsion generated from a nuclear material. All three of those things are coalescing to be a real, to have real demand coming into the2030s, whether it be for getting to Mars quickly, whether it be for producing electricity on the moon, or if you just have a lander or a crawler on the moon that goes up to the dark side of the moon and you want to survive those two weeks of shadow, you need some sort of heat source so your equipment stays alive. So all of that is coming together and we're finding some real pinch points in the process.
- [11:46]
David Schleeper
Yeah, please tell me more about those pinch points because I've been hearing a bit about it and I want to learn more.
- [11:51]
Unnamed Expert
Correct. So there's been a long history of US launches or the US launching nuclear payloads goes way back to the 50s or 60s. It's slowed down quite a bit here. In the last few decades, we might average one nuclear payload launch a year. And there's two reasons for that. One problem that companies like Xenopower and others have solved, and that is the primary source of nuclear fuel in space has been plutonium 238, which has a lot of benefits. It permits alpha radiation, which is very easily shielded, but it's also very expensive. It has to be produced in a very specific type of reactor and harvested from that cores. So there's just not a lot of it. NASA estimates they might have four missions left of plutonium 238. And one of those missions would be the Dragonfly mission, scheduled for 2028. So there's not a lot of that left. So other companies have gone out, looked for other isotopes that are part of your standard reactor decay, and they've identified some other possibilities, such as Strontium 90 and Americium 241. The Americium in particular puts out alpha radiation. So it's pretty similar to plutonium and how you would manage it, but it has a much longer half life of 430 years versus the 87 of plutonium. So you can see some advantages if you have a long, long mission to Jupiter, Saturn, even to Mars, 430 year half life, you won't notice much performance difference. So we seem to have some solution, we seem to have some solutions coming for the shortage of plutonium and the cost. Therefore, the next issue, the second issue that has been a real pinch point is how do we integrate these nuclear fuels into our payloads and onto the rockets. There is essentially one facility that's doing this currently, sporadically. It is the phsf, the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility. It's at Kennedy Space center and it checks all the boxes. It has some cleanliness capabilities. It's separated enough from the rest of the spaceport that you're traffic's not going to interrupt what you're doing and the nuclear material isn't going to interrupt traffic, vice versa. And it's also close enough to the pads that you can roll quickly out to the pad without disrupting the public or other other operations going on. I would say that the average stay time when a company comes to integrated payloads, let's say the Dragonfly mission in 2028, they expect to be there about six months. So it's a pretty long integration process. And the when speaking with rocket companies, these nuclear companies, the payload providers, we expect double digit nuclear launches annually by the end of the 2000 and 30s. So 2035 to 2040, we could see two launches a year, I'm sorry, dozen launches per year of nuclear payloads. So with the choke point being a singular facility that can handle no more than two payloads a year, we're trying to raise the red flag and identify that is a problem now and see what we can do to resolve it.
- [14:44]
David Schleeper
Yeah, so I would imagine, I mean it sounds like we need to be shoring up our existing bases and our spaceports to have that kind of a facility. I imagine it's very difficult to spin up. I mean there's got to be a reason.
- [14:57]
Maria Varmazas
There's only one.
- [14:59]
David Schleeper
It must be extraordinarily difficult to build one of these.
- [15:02]
Unnamed Expert
Correct. Part of the problem is just the isolation. You don't want to put this right in the middle of heavy spaceport traffic, whether it's road traffic, flight paths, et cetera, et cetera. So there are very few geographic locations that are still capable of this. We're looking at other options within RS&H to propose to different companies, one would be, would a sea based platform where you integrate these nuclear payloads and launch them at sea, would that be productive? Would that be useful? And what other ways can we either retrofit existing facilities or build new facilities so they can be safe? We can integrate all this nuclear material that does emit radiation, admittedly. How can we do that safely without interrupting already congested spaceport activity?
- [15:44]
David Schleeper
Yeah, yeah, I'm just, I'm thinking, you know, we already have an issue where we don't have enough spaceport capacity. In general though, launching from CC has been something that I know a lot of people are looking at as a, to alleviate that issue. But you know, there a lot of our spaceports, there's been population growth around them and you know there's going to be, there's always going to be pushback, understandably. So, you know, we need more spaceport.
- [16:07]
Maria Varmazas
You know, it's a very complex issue.
- [16:10]
David Schleeper
So aside from launching at sea is the thought that maybe more isolated spaceports would be a solution like geographically isolated.
- [16:19]
Unnamed Expert
Correct. Another option we're looking at is could you integrate the payload right at the pad. That means the nuclear material would be outside of its cast for a shorter period of time. It'd be integrated onto the rocket day before launch and go from there. And frankly, Maria's change.
- [16:38]
David Schleeper
Yeah, correct.
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Unnamed Expert
And that would not be an insignificant thing. There's new tools, equipment, facilities, lots of things that would need to be implemented for that. And frankly, some of the companies we've spoken with, they're pondering the idea of launching from a non federal range. Because if you go to a federal range, there are additional hoops to jump through as far as nuclear material. Whereas if you launch from a private range, you have more freedom to operate, more flexibility to operate.
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David Schleeper
That makes sense.
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Unnamed Expert
Less requirements, less hoops to jump through.
- [17:07]
David Schleeper
Yep, yep, I could see that.
- [17:08]
Maria Varmazas
Yeah.
- [17:09]
David Schleeper
So going back to the process change. Yeah, the integration process seems to me from the outside an extraordinarily complex thing. So the idea of, I imagine not just a process change but even, you know, the launch vehicle itself, I mean would it be, would we need new launch vehicles or would they need to be retrofitted in some way to accept or. Actually yeah, I'm just trying to imagine like if we change things to load onto, to load onto the payload. Sorry, I'm completely confused right now. Sorry. Take your time.
- [17:45]
Unnamed Expert
You're no more confused than I am. Don't worry.
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David Schleeper
So what I'm trying to get at is it sounds like to me, if we were going to put the, the nuclear material on at the launch pad. It would not only be a process change, but also the, the spacecraft itself would need to be significantly changed, maybe.
- [18:05]
Maria Varmazas
Or would it not?
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David Schleeper
I mean, and that's the part that's. Yeah, potentially okay because we're talking about a big process change. Yeah, go ahead.
- [18:11]
Maria Varmazas
Yep.
- [18:11]
Unnamed Expert
No, on that, on that topic, I really look at what Intuitive Machines has done on top of a Falcon 9. They've, they've been able to modify the fairing and fuel their landers when it's vertical on the pad with lng. It might take something similar to integrate these nuclear payloads. And I would say that the TLDR of everything I've said so far is it's probably time or it's well past time for nuclear companies, the rocket companies, the space ports and any interested party to start getting to sit down at a table, discuss what the requirements are and how we can most optimally do this. Because there are real changes that will be needed to, to do this. We need to figure out the best processes, the best procedures and the most effective path forward.
- [19:00]
David Schleeper
Absolutely. Because the clock certainly is ticking and there is a lot that needs to happen. So, David, I want to just thank you sincerely for being so patient with me as I'm trying to understand this, because as I've. I fessed up at the beginning, this is definitely something where I'm learning from the start. So thank you so much for explaining this so well to me.
- [19:20]
Maria Varmazas
Is there anything that you want to.
- [19:21]
David Schleeper
Leave our audience with as sort of any final thoughts before we head out?
- [19:26]
Unnamed Expert
It would go back to what I was just mentioning. I think we need to get the right people at the table to have this conversation. And obviously each rocket is going to have its own requirements. Each payload will have its own requirements. There's a lot of environmental conditioning like cooling that is going to need to be provided that we just haven't done in the past. So it would be beneficial to the industry as a whole if an organization such as gsa, Space foundation, any of the space flights so started hosting roundtables. Get these companies together, get the NDA signed. Right. So nobody's divulging proprietary information, but let's start figuring this out. We don't even know what the radiation is going to do to the vehicle, much less how to integrate it. So there's. We are at step zero of this plan and it needs to start two years ago, probably.
- [20:25]
Maria Varmazas
We'll be right back.
- [20:34]
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- [21:14]
Maria Varmazas
Welcome back. I spent last week on vacation, really a staycation and very much offline. I had lots of conversations with neighbors and shop owners and people in my local community, which always leads to fun conversations about what I do for a living and inevitably interesting points of view from everyday folks who often have little interest, let alone understanding about space stuff. And yeah, last week the hot takes about the all female blue origin flight were very interesting. But I will spare you when I get to talk with someone who remembers the early 1960s well. Something I love to tell them is that Telstars 1 and 2, which are telecommunications satellites that were launched in 1962 and 63 to huge international fanfare at the time. Well, they are both still in orbit. Yes, they have outlasted the British band the Tornadoes, which wrote a chart topping song about Telstar and broke up in the late 1960s, a decade after Telstar. The satellite's not the song The Soviet Union launched a 495 kilo spacecraft, the Kosmos 482. It was supposed to head to Venus, but had technical issues trying to leave our planet's orbit, and has been stuck there ever since, slowly circling the orbital drain. But its time is coming to a close, and Kosmos 482 is expected to make its earthly RE entry point pretty soon, sometime between May 8th and 11th of this year. We are at a solar maximum, though, so solar activity could shift that timeline in either direction. Normally an old bit of spacecraft reentering the Earth's atmosphere is not really noteworthy, but remember that Cosmos 482 was Venus bound, and so it was designed to survive the horrendous Venusian atmosphere. Or try to anyway. Which means there's a decent chance it won't burn up entirely on reentry here. No need to go all Chicken Little, though. The sky is not falling. Just maybe let's keep a little eye out on Kosmos 482's expected re entry path as its final days draw closer. Most likely it'll make a watery landing, but maybe some of you lucky listeners will get to see its fiery demise safely from a great distance. Foreign that's it for T minus for April 28, 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 spacen2k.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 teams smarter. Learn how@n2k.com N2K Senior Producer is Alice Carus. 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'm your host Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.
- [24:55]
Unnamed Expert
T minus.
- [25:09]
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