Cloudy, with the chance of an eclipse.

In some parts of North America today, the sun got a little shy, hiding behind the moon.

And if you were in the path of the Eclipse's totality, I hope it was a spectacular experience you'll remember for a lifetime.

And for everyone else, somewhere on the Eclipse's path today, I give you the kindest wish for anyone skygazing.

I hope your view wasn't obscured by clouds.

[MUSIC] Today is April 8th, 2024.

I'm Maria Varmausus, and this is T-minus.

[MUSIC] UKSA announces 13 million pound funding boost for international partnerships.

Space Workforce 2030 shares its second annual report.

SpaceX launches the first bandwagon ride share mission.

And our guest today is Melanie Strickland, Executive Director of Space Workforce 2030.

She will be talking about the initiative's second annual report that was shared today at the 39th Space Symposium.

So stay with us for that.

[MUSIC] Let's get into Monday's briefing, shall we?

It's day one of the 39th Space Symposium, and the T-minus team are here in Colorado Springs.

Thousands of others from across the space industry are also joining us to network, make sideline deals, and to share information that will move the industry forward.

Many international agencies and organizations are also in attendance.

NASA, for example, is sending astronauts Jessica Watkins and Raja Chari, as well as Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy to the conference.

The US Space Agency says that their leadership will focus on space sustainability at this year's conference.

Pam Melroy will be delivering a keynote on responsible exploration, preserving the cosmos for tomorrow.

And the UK Space Agency is using the symposium to promote its international partnerships.

UK SAEA has announced that it will be supporting 11 projects through the agency's International Bilateral Fund.

The 13 million pound funding boost aims to support the UK space sector in working with international partners on innovative projects.

This is the phase two grant allocation of the fund, and it includes research projects that will allow four UK universities to work with international research institutions, such as MIT.

Other announcements from Space Symposium today include the Space Workforce 2030 Initiative Second Annual Report.

You'll hear more details on that in our chat with the inaugural executive director of the initiative, Melanie Strickland, later in the show.

SpaceX launched a new rideshare program called the Bandwagon this weekend. 11 satellites hitched a ride on a Falcon 9 rocket to a mid inclination orbit, hence the new mission name.

The rideshare launched from Florida with SpaceX sharing video of the takeoff, but it ended its live stream early at the request of its customer South Korea, which flew its project 425 SAR, or Synthetic Aperture Radar, satellite on the mission.

Also on board were Hawkeye 360's clusters 8 and 9, which the company has already announced were successfully deployed.

Tyvek International's Centauri 6, IQPS's QPSSR7 Tsukiyomi 2, Capella Spaces Capella 14, and Tata Advanced Systems Limited T-SAT 1A.

And while those satellites are heading up this weekend, three crewmates from the International Space Station headed down back to Earth.

NASA astronaut Laurel O'Hara landed back on Earth after a six month research mission aboard the ISS, along with Roscosmos Cosmonaut Oleg Novitski and Belarus Space Flight Participant Marina Vasilovskaya.

The crew returned on a Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft, which landed safely in Kazakhstan.

KBR says it has been awarded new contracts estimated at more than $450 million to deliver highly technical systems engineering support and services to the US government.

The contracts focus on sustaining both space and ground systems, enhancing acquisition efficiency via digital engineering and supporting secure communications, information technology systems, and data analysis.

Work is expected to be reformed through 2031.

And finally, NASA engineers have figured out why the Voyager 1 spacecraft has been transmitting gibberish for the last five months.

It seems like old age has caught up with the vehicle and of course it's a memory issue.

A small portion of correct memory to be precise.

Now that the team understands what took the spacecraft offline, they're hopeful that they can get the spacecraft back to fully operational and transmitting useful data.

A memory issue, huh?

I have never related so much to a spacecraft in my entire life.

That concludes our briefing for today.

We'll be bringing you updates from the space symposium throughout this week, along with special guests from the AWS Aerospace and Satellite booth.

You'll find links to further reading on all the stories I've mentioned in our show notes.

Along with an announcement from our friends at Lone Star Space on their next lunar data center mission.

N2K Space is working with Amazon Web Services Aerospace and Satellite to bring the AWS in orbit podcast series to the 39th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs from April 8th to 11th.

And we are broadcasting from the AWS booth number 1036 in the North Hall, Tuesday through Thursday from 9 to 11 a.m.

So come on by the booth to catch us in action and share your story with us.

Or email us at space@n2k.com to set up a meeting with our team.

Hey T-minus crew, every Monday we produce a written intelligence roundup.

It's called Signals and Space.

So if you happen to miss any T-minus episodes, this strategic intelligence product will get you up to speed in the fastest way possible.

It's all signal, no noise.

You can sign up for signals in space in our show notes or at space.n2k.com.

[Music] As we mentioned earlier, the Space Workforce 2030 Initiative released their second annual report today.

T-minus producer Alice Karuth spoke to the initiative's inaugural executive director, Melanie Strickland, about those results, but started by asking Melanie to walk us through the nexus for starting the initiative.

It's an initiative that started a couple of years ago by the cohort of 30 of the leading space companies around our country and aerospace corporation in collaboration with those leaders from those 30 companies.

I was one of those CEOs at the time that signed and pledged Slingshot Aerospace to the awesome opportunities that lied ahead, and that was cornered and still is on the tremendous push in boundaries of space innovation.

The market continues to grow at a rapid pace, but unfortunately our graduating STEM degree individuals are actually going down.

So the numbers of those that graduate with STEM are going down at a rate that is not commensurate with the growth of STEM related jobs.

What Space Workforce 2030 came together to do is to eliminate that talent gap.

At the heart of that expansive innovation of everything that we do on orbit is a workforce.

It is the people, those whose creativity, those whose ingenuity really drive our nation to the apex of global space leadership.

And so what better time than in midst of a STEM crisis to really examine the problem and get in and build that bridge across that gap.

And it takes all.

That's why this is a cohort of the leading companies and those that really care about how their talent is comprised within their company.

Those that understand that diversity around the scrum room to the boardroom help us continue to have a U.S. global leadership position around the world.

And that leadership position is synonymous with global leadership on orbit.

I'm excited to be part of it and excited and honored to lead it.

This has been going on for a couple of years and I believe you're just releasing the second annual report on this.

Can you walk us through some of the findings that you found for the Space Workforce?

You know, as part of our commitment to ensuring that the workforce meets the accelerating needs that we just talked through about our nation space industry, as part of the original pledge said, hey, we are going to publicly share our progress and hold ourselves accountable to the increase in the number of women and employees from underrepresented groups in our collective talent base.

So this year, the 2022-23 results will be presenting that aggregated data we have had meaningful improvements in both women and people of color in our technical staff.

We've had meaningful increases in people of color interns and intern hires under our national space intern program and those adjacent intern programs within our partner companies.

And the results really show encouraging progress.

You know, this, I do want to say this is a journey.

This is not a destination necessarily.

And so we've got a lot of work ahead of us, but the results are encouraging.

Women and technical staff went up about 0.9%.

People of color went up 1.4% in those technical staff roles.

The interns, we dipped down a little bit on the women and we went up in people of color by 1.9%.

So we're looking to increase intern conversions this year.

And so some of the expanding possibilities there is opening the aperture for interns.

Originally, it's to be a space, a national space intern.

You had to be a woman or a person of color.

We're actually opening that up and you had to come through our website and register.

And so now we're saying, look, let's count all interns that are part of our partner companies.

And let's make sure that we're sharing that data collectively.

So next year we'll be raising the fidelity of that intern and intern conversion as we see it today.

Now, one of the things you just picked up on was the lowering rate of women in aerospace.

And you've been a CEO and founder yourself.

Why do you think it is that women aren't attracted to these STEM roles in the aerospace industry?

We have to think about the education to space workforce pipeline holistically.

To answer that question.

And I don't think that women aren't interested.

I think that we have to go back to K through 12 and we have to go back to graduate and undergraduate levels and show opportunity, expose more people, expose more women and people of color to the opportunity space.

A lot of folks just believe that being part of the space industry means you have to be top of your class in mathematics and science and technology.

And in order to be part, you have to be an engineer.

And so we've got to expose that there are more technical roles and more interesting roles out there than they may have been exposed to previously.

A lot of people think in order to be in space, you have to be an astronaut.

Right.

And we all know that that is probably the sinister percentage of the space industry.

And there's so many exciting new roles with this growing exponentially growing space economy.

Even fashion designers are now designing the next lunar space suit.

So there's something for everyone.

And we've just got to make sure that women and people of color, which are the largest opportunities that we're seeing through our data, that they're exposed and that they can see it to be it.

And that's why it's so important that we've got these three pillars.

It starts with K through 12.

It inspire goes to prepare, which is the graduate and undergraduate.

And then it moves on to employee and employee isn't just converting an intern.

It's retaining.

It's making sure that all employees belong and sharing best practices across our leading space companies on what's working to retain that talent within our ecosystem.

And most companies don't typically share that information, especially in a competitive landscape.

So Space Workforce 2030 is special in that regard, that it's been able to facilitate an open communication path so that we can work together to not just increase, but retain and certainly get out there and expose opportunities earlier on to children, the little girls, to people of color and underrepresented groups that don't typically have that exposure through their school systems.

So you're relatively new to this role, to lead this initiative.

What is it you're hoping to achieve going forward?

Now you've had the second year report come out.

What is the first big thing for you to achieve?

So my role is to come in and use the principles that I learned in both the Air Force and in my previous entrepreneurial journey to scale this organization and to scale our impact, to reach more people.

And how do we do that?

And how do we fundraise against that so that we can sustain this?

And how do we, it's not just the monetary side of it.

How do we add more human capital to this from the perspective of partners?

So in our partner companies right now, it is for-profit companies.

This year, under my leadership and under the new landmark partnership between Aerospace Corporation and Space Foundation, it really allows us under this charitable nonprofit to expand into other organizations, other government organizations, other nonprofits.

So you'll see some scale in that regard.

That will be new.

I mentioned earlier with our National Space Intern Program that we're opening that aperture to include all interns that are part of these companies as a national space intern.

You no longer have to be of a certain demographic, a certain race, a certain gender to register, nor do you have to come through our program to be considered a national space intern.

Now, that's company by company.

They have to make the decision to allow their interns to be part of this or empower them, I should say, to be part of this.

But we're seeing wide acceptance of this and that's great.

Another thing is on the K-12 site, when I first landed, there was an effort to reinvigorate something that had started back in '97 as a small kind of grassroots effort to celebrate space on a certain day of the year, the first Friday of May.

And so with that, we've put a lot of push behind getting a national space day, really on the books for our nation, for our kids to come together and celebrate space.

So this year, Spacework Force 2030 has put together a streaming event that'll happen on May 3rd, which is a Friday.

And every fourth and fifth grade class around the nation will have opportunity to access this live stream.

And these are influencers from NASA to astronauts to those that built the robots that roam on Mars to policy makers and spacesuit makers.

I mean, you name it.

The people that are taking our space industry to the next level are answering questions that these 10-year-olds very authentically exposed us to.

And they are the best questions in the world.

And these leaders in our industry are answering them.

And that's going to be streamed out.

And that will be our first effort in formalizing National Space Day.

If there's a company listening right now that's perhaps a small startup of things, maybe I don't have a place in this.

What would you say to them?

Would you encourage small companies to get involved in the Spacework Force 2030 initiative?

I do.

And that's part of our scale as well.

I talked about other organizations, government and nonprofits.

And certainly there's a place for startups within Spacework Force 2030.

What we do is we build these committees from those folks that want to volunteer their time as part of what they're doing inside their company, but as a collective.

So each one of these pillars inspire, prepare, and employ, have representation from these companies.

Now, a startup may not have the time to go across all three.

It may say, hey, we do have someone that goes out and does them once a quarter.

Well, great.

Sign up for our pledge.

Let's help you as you help us extend that opportunity to within your STEM efforts.

So there's a place for everyone within Spacework Force 2030, but you have to pledge and you have to commit and you have to dedicate time to this if you are going to be part of Spacework Force 2030.

It's not about a logo and it's not necessarily about quotas.

We want to build the best Spacework Force in the world.

In order to do that, it does take time.

It takes effort.

It takes dedication and it takes commitment.

So startups have a lot on their plate, but if you want to be part of Spacework Force 2030 and you can do those four things with us inside, saddle with us, we welcome you.

We'll be right back.

Welcome back.

Now, some of you got to enjoy a total eclipse today, though many of us are happy to suffice with a partial.

And the crew currently aboard the ISS, they just missed getting to see totality.

But they did pass through the Eclipse's path three times today with one of those pass-throughs over Labrador, Canada at 94% occlusion.

The sun wasn't 100% covered by the moon for them, but 94% partial eclipse is not bad at all.

Plus, they did have the best view of all zero chance of clouds getting in their way in low Earth orbit.

And yes, they did need to use the same solar eclipse viewing glasses that we all have down here.

Protect those peepers.

In case you were wondering, not everyone in low Earth orbit got a few of the eclipse today.

The Tian Gong's path today didn't take it over North America, so the crew aboard China's space station unfortunately didn't get to see it.

And who else missed it from space?

Well, the three crew who just returned to Earth over the weekend via a Soyuz spacecraft off by just two days.

May that be some consolation, I suppose, for all of us who also missed out.

That's it for T-minus for April 8, 2024.

For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.ntuk.com.

We'd love to know what you think of this podcast.

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Learn more at NTK.com.

This episode was produced by Alice Carruth, mixing by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester, with original music and sound design by Elliot Peltzman.

Our associate producer is Liz Stokes.

Our executive producer is Jen Iban.

Our VP is Brandon Karpf.

And I'm Maria Varmazis.

Thanks for listening.

We'll see you tomorrow.

[Music] T-minus.

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