The fish on the Chinese space station are okay.

[MUSIC] Happy National Women in Aerospace Day to our United States listeners. National Women in Aerospace Day provides an opportunity to recognize and honor the achievements of women working in the aerospace industry. It allows us to celebrate their accomplishments and highlight the vital role that women play in this traditionally male dominated field. [MUSIC] Today is May 20th, 2024. I'm Maria Varmasus and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] NASA selects four companies for new spacecraft and related services. China completes the testing of its first vertical high altitude simulation test bench for liquid rocket engines. And our guest today is Jennifer Spears, Vice President of Engineering at Merrick and Company. Jennifer is the structural engineer of record for NASA's SLS liquid hydrogen tank test stand at Marshall Space Flight Center. Stay with us to find out more about that. [MUSIC] It's Monday. Let's kick off the week right shall we? And we're starting our Intel briefing today with some big contract announcements from the US Space Agency NASA. And NASA has selected four companies to provide spacecraft and related services including acquiring spacecraft components and equipment in support of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The multiple awards are indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity based contracts with a total combined value of, drum roll please, [DRUM ROLL] $6 billion. [DRUM ROLL] And yes, we do know that IDIQ contracts do exaggerate their firm fixed price, but still, $6 billion is a lot. So these multi-agency contracts may support other NASA centers and federal agencies. And according to the NASA website, the performance period is through August 31st, 2025, with the potential to extend the effective ordering period until August 31st, 2030. NASA says the spacecraft designs, related items and services may be tailored as needed to meet the unique needs of each mission. The contracts are for the Rapid Spacecraft Acquisition 4 OnRamp 3 program, which allows for the original solicitation to be periodically reopened in order to give the new vendors the opportunity to propose flight-proven spacecraft designs. OnRamps also give vendors who've already been awarded a Rapid 4 contract the opportunity to propose additional flight-proven spacecraft designs and/or to update their existing catalog designs. The companies selected for the Rapid 4 contract include ArgoTech, Blue Canyon Technologies, General Atomics, and Kongsburg NanoAvionics. And a quick update to an over-the-weekend timeline shift for Starliner. The crewed flight test has now been bumped an additional four days out, and it's now scheduled for Saturday, May 25th, at 3.09 p.m. Eastern. NASA and Boeing need more time to fix the helium leak that they discovered about a week ago. And speaking of human spaceflight, congratulations are in order for the crew of Blue Origin's New Shepard 25 mission for reaching the edge of space this weekend. The NS25 mission was the 7th human spaceflight and the 25th flight for the New Shepard program. The six-person astronaut crew included former Air Force Captain Ed Dwight, who was selected by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 as United States' first black astronaut candidate, but he never had the opportunity to fly to space. NS25 is the first crewed flight for the New Shepard since August 2022. Blue Origin has now flown 37 people to the Karman Line from its West Texas spaceport. TELUS and PESCAL say that they have solved key satellite planning challenges through Neutral Atom Quantum Computing. The two companies say that they've succeeded in solving a satellite planning problem on the quantum processing unit or QPU. This experiment indicated that Neutral Atom Quantum Computers are particularly well-suited for this kind of task, as there is a natural correspondence between the satellite planning problem and the arrangement of atoms in the QPU. That's pretty cool. This correspondence allows for an efficient approach to solving optimization problems, thus offering new perspectives in the field of advanced satellite planning. And China's first vertical high-altitude simulation test bench for liquid rocket engines successfully completed its ground testing last week. The test bed simulates high-altitude conditions for liquid engines, replicating a near-vacuum environment for thousands of seconds. The facility, which was developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, is now ready for operations. And the site is expected to play a crucial role in advancing the development of China's next generation engines for the Long March 10 liquid hydrogen rocket. Think Orbital has announced the success of their first flight campaign. The company designed and built the world's first autonomous in-space welding system. That system successfully launched and landed on a Falcon 9 on May 6th, and the test flight returned flown in space electron beam welder samples. The samples from the first flight will now be meticulously analyzed by NASA and the European Space Agency. Rocket Factory Augsburg, also known as RFA, has successfully hot-fired their rocket's first stage at Saxaverd spaceport in Scotland. The test campaign used a total of four helix engines, igniting one by one at four second intervals. All engines ran simultaneously for eight seconds with a total hot-fire duration of 20 seconds. RFA says the test ran flawlessly through startup, steady-state, and shutdown, and the campaign demonstrated that they can nominally operate and control their first stage and all of its systems, as well as a cluster of helix engines. The company plans to run another hot-fire test campaign to run more engines at a longer burn duration. And Space Startup SARSat-X has closed cycle three of the Riyadh SEED program. The Saudi and UAE-based Earth Observation Company received an undisclosed amount from Flat Six Labs, which is the leading SEED and early-stage venture capital firm in the MENA region. Flat Six Labs invests annually in over 100 innovative and technology-driven startups. This latest investment follows previous funding rounds for SARSat-X, including a pre-SEED round in 2020 and another in 2023, which saw an $855,000 investment from the KAUST Innovation Fund. And that is it for our briefing for today. Check out the selected reading section of our show notes for more information on all the stories that I've mentioned, and we have added three additional stories in there for you. One is on the Pentagon's move to counter threats in orbit, another is announcing the Department of Defense's Acting Assistant Secretary for Space Policy, and the third one's on a new network for maritime communications from Viasat. Hey T-Minus Crew, every Monday we produce a written intelligence roundup, and it is called Signals and Space. If you happen to miss any T-minus episodes, the 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 and Space in our show notes or at space.n2k.com. Our guest today is Jennifer Spears, Vice President of Engineering at American Company. Jennifer has a really amazing role as a structural engineer in the aerospace industry, and I was interested in hearing more about how she got into her role. I am with American Company. I am a senior structural engineer, and I am also the Vice President of Engineering for the entire company. Some of my, you know, claim to fame, so to speak, is I was the the structural engineer of record for NASA's SLS Space Launch System, Liquid Hydrogen Tank Test, Structural Test Stand at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. So that was a great key project for our company for me personally. It's kind of one of those once-in-the-lifetime opportunities. I mean, how often do test stands be built? We built on the site of an Apollo test stand, so you know, gives you an idea of how often they're being built. The legacy, yeah. I know. And then I am, I also oversaw the construction of that test stand, plus our company designed the liquid oxygen test stand for SLS, also at Marshall Space Flight Center. The construction was at the same time, so I oversaw the construction for both. And I'm also the structural engineer of record for some new Artemis platforms that are being constructed right now to go into the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Oh, that's so cool. Given what you do and what you build and what you work on, can you tell me a bit about your education, your career journey, how you got to where you are today? Sure. It really, it started pretty early. So when I was in, it was I think sixth grade, my math class had a unit about tracking satellites. And I thought that was the coolest unit. I'd always had an interest in space, but that somehow clicked something in my brain that I was like, oh, maybe this is something I want to do for the rest of my life, something associated with space and NASA and everything. And so that was in my thought process. And then in eighth grade, we had a careers class. And you had to do research on a couple of top careers. And so of course, I was like, oh, aerospace engineering, like that's really piqued my interest. Let me look into this. And so, so I did the research for the class and I was reading about how the shuttle platform may be going away and not to knock planes and those that work on them, but that didn't interest me. And I really liked the space aspect of NASA. And so I didn't want to go down the path of getting an education for a career that maybe by the time I get that education, I'm not going to have anything to do that's in the field of what I love. And so, freshman year of high school, I took an intro to engineering class at one of the universities. It was University of Missouri-Roller. We lived in Kansas at the time. And it was a week-long class during the summer where you got to go and explore all sorts of different engineering disciplines. So I looked at structural engineering because I liked Legos and I liked Lincoln Logs and I liked building things. And I was like, well, you know, I've already turned that, you know, I've already ruled out aerospace engineering. So let's see what else. And I really loved the structural engineering. And so, so freshman year of high school, I decided I was going to be a structural engineer. And so I continued down that path. I went to school at University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. At the time, they were one of the top two, one or two, alternated every year of the number one civil engineering schools in the country. I was going to say it's a great engineering school. I know it well. Yeah, yeah, yep. And so I did my undergrad there and I did my grad there and then decided to move to Atlanta after grad school. And I've been here ever since. And I've worked with a couple of different companies and then had some friends that worked at Merrick. So reached out to my friends and I was like, you know, if you got an opening, let me know. And so they had an opening and I've been here ever since and hoping to finish out my career here. So it's a great company and love it. And I love the work we do. It's been a nice bonus then. So when I started, we do a lot of government work, department of defense and various, you know, things like installations, whatever. And we got the Test Stand project. And so I started working on that and it was like my childhood dream coming true. I was going to say, yeah. It was the NASA coming to fruition, but also the structural engineering, which I do love. You know, I still love Legos and building things and getting to do it in real life with steel and concrete and everything. And I love the work that we're doing with aerospace. And it's really exciting getting to be a part of history. I mean, it's a brand new rocket, the Space Launch System that I've been working on for the last 12 years. It's exciting to say that I've had a part of history and helping that to come to fruition. And I'm excited getting to work with commercial entities and propel that into, you know, more mainstay and see how that grows and help that progress. And it's just, it's really exciting to get to do both aspects of what I've loved since I was a kid. I love that. I love that for you. Oh my gosh. I was going to say, like, I mean, getting to be a structural engineer, building those cool things on its own is amazing. And then, then eventually, your career leading you to something, building things for space programs is like, what a, what the cherry on top of. Oh my gosh, that is, that is like the perfect example of something we talk about a lot on the show about, you know, your career taking you to cool places. And if you're interested in space, it doesn't mean you have to be like an aerospace engineer. You really like, you can, you can take other paths. All right. So you have worked on, I mean, in the space realm, something very, very, very cool things. I mean, when you think on that and how much work that was, how much effort that's been, what it has helped build to, I mean, aside from being, I'm sure, extremely proud of the work that you've done. I mean, what are your, what comes to mind? What bubbles up when you think of all that just at the macro level? Honestly, at the macro level was being there for Artemis One's launch. So I started working on NASA when my oldest child was one years old. So I've got three kids. All they know really is mommy does stuff for NASA, you know, that I'm a structural engineer and I do stuff for NASA. And I was going to be at that launch. So, so we drove down for every single launch attempt. We were there when it launched November of what 22 and like one in the morning and my kids were there with me. My husband was there, you know, they were there. My son turned to me. He's like, congratulations, mommy. I was like, oh, fantastic. So, so it all boils down to just like I said, being a part of history and being a part of it and and being able to say that I helped us get there. And the the test stand was exciting because like I said, they hadn't built another test stand in, I think like 40 years or something. So it really is like a once in a career opportunity. And so we designed it and they gave us the, you know, the parameters when we were first starting to look at it. We're designing for something that's also being designed. I mean, at the time, the rocket was still in design. So, so we ended up designing the test stand actually like six different times by the time all was constructed because the vehicle itself was being constructed. So the loading requirements changed and whatever and and that's okay. That's how it works. That's part of there's never a dull moment when you're in the aerospace industry because it's not your day to day operations, you know, there's always something different. And so it's and it's it's really exciting because it's got the ability to to be reconfigured for different articles. In fact, they recently reconfigured it to so they tested the hydrogen tank. Everything went fantastically. They tested it to failure and the test stand, you know, held up beautifully and or just yep. Yep. Which is what I of course cared about. Yeah. Yeah, you want that. Yeah. Right. And so, but it's nice because it's got this this movable load deck so that they can like raise and lower it like 170 feet. And so they just reconfigured it to test a new component, which is exciting that they can continue to use this, you know, for all the who knows what the different rocket configurations are going to be going forward. And, you know, that Artemis isn't going to be the last. NASA's not the only space entity anymore. And but they've got this that it can it can be used for a very long time and for different rockets, different configurations. You're still working on a lot of incredible things now. I mean, it's got to be exciting. What are you looking forward to? Like, what do you what do you feel like it's coming next that you're just you just can't wait to share with the world? I mean, okay, maybe you can't tell me, but anything you want to share about what's coming next? Yeah, I'm not quite sure how much I can share about my next upcoming project other than to say that there's future configurations of Artemis that are taller, bigger, have additional components. And I'm really excited because we're getting ready to start design for another structure that's going to help them with the assembly and processing of some of those future components that so we're still working on on new versions of Artemis and that, you know, it's still evolving, it's still growing, it's still changing the work that we're doing to help, like I said, some of the commercial entities as well. Because I think that the more people we have in the space game, the more innovation we're going to get the faster things are going to grow and progress and get perfected so to speak. That will, you know, I just think it's great to have more people coming to get to the table with more ideas and whatever we can do to help those is exciting. We'll be right back. Welcome back. In case this one was keeping you up at night, let me put your mind at ease. The fish on the Chinese space station are okay. I repeat, the fish on the Chinese space station are okay. That's the official word coming from the Chinese Academy of Sciences yesterday regarding the four zebrafish and four grams of goldfish algae that went up to the Tiangong space station alongside their astronaut companions on the Shenzhou 18 mission. They've been up there now about a month and the official verdict is they're fine. Zebrafish are well loved by medical researchers to study human diseases as they have a lot of similarities to humans. 70% of human genes are also found in zebrafish and we also share a lot of common organs and features. So here's a quote from the United States National Institute of Health on zebrafish. Zebrafish have two eyes, a mouth, brain, spinal cord, intestine, pancreas, liver, bile ducts, kidney, esophagus, heart, ear, nose, muscle, blood, bone, cartilage, and teeth. Many of the genes and critical pathways that are required to grow these features are highly conserved between humans and zebrafish. Thus, any type of disease that causes changes in these body parts in humans could theoretically be modeled in zebrafish. Thank you NIH. And we know fish can survive in space well enough thanks to previous experiments done aboard both Skylab and the International Space Station. So sending zebrafish to space actually makes a lot of sense for space-based human medical research, especially in studying the effects of long-term microgravity exposure. And these are no ordinary zebrafish, by the way. These specimens are especially fit for the task. According to Wang Gaohong, who is a researcher at the Institute of Hydrobiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and I quote, "Like astronauts, zebrafish need to pass through rounds of selection to become aqua-stronauts." Honestly wondering here, what could that entail? Especially as the Medaka fish that were part of a JAXA experiment on the ISS actually went on the vomit comet. So, did the Tiangong zebrafish go through some kind of tiny centrifuge? A fish treadmill for a stress test? Is there a video? The imagination goes wild. And given that the Shenzhou crews tend to spend a six-month rotation aboard Tiangong and Shenzhou's been up in low-earth orbit for about a month now, it went another five months before they get to say so long. And thanks for all the fish. That's it for T-minus for May 20th, 2024, brought to you by NTUK Cyberwire. 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. Your feedback ensures that 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 favorite podcast app. Also, please fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to space@ntuk.com and let us know what you think. We're privileged that NTUK Cyberwire is part of the daily routine of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector. From the Fortune 500, many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies. NTUK 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 at NTUK.com. This episode was produced by Alice Karuth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester, with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iban. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilpie is our publisher. And I'm your host, Maria Varmausis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music]