Unlocking the mystery of clouds.

[MUSIC] Clouds, little fluffy clouds. We see them all the time and yet they remain one of the biggest uncertainties in our understanding of how the Earth's atmosphere drives the climate system. More importantly, how clouds will shape our future climate. But soon there'll be a mystery no longer, thanks to the launch of EarthCare. [MUSIC] Today is May 29th, 2024. I'm Maria Varmasus. This is T-minus. [MUSIC] SpaceX launches the EarthCare satellite. China's galactic energy completes a second sea-based rocket launch. Saudi's sovereign wealth fund to invest in space. And for our interview today, we're doing something a little different. I'll be talking with women in cybersecurity executive director Lin Dome and N2K's Simone Petrella, Dr. Heather Monty and Jeff Welgan about the 2024 Cyber Talent Study. Stay with us to hear more about it. [MUSIC] Happy Wednesday everybody. Here's today's Intel briefing for you. SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket launched the EarthCare satellite yesterday afternoon. The Earth Cloud aerosol and radiation explorer, or EarthCare for short, aims to shed new light on the complex interactions between clouds, aerosols and radiation within Earth's atmosphere. This new mission is a joint venture between the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA. The EarthCare satellite carries a set of four state-of-the-art instruments. It's got a cloud profiling radar, which will provide information on the vertical structure and internal dynamics of clouds, an atmospheric lidar to deliver profiles of aerosols and thin clouds, as well as cloud top information, a multispectral imager offering a wide-scene overview in multiple wavelengths, and a broadband radiometer that measures reflected solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation coming from Earth. These four instruments combined will work together to provide a holistic view of the complex interplay between clouds, aerosols and radiation. Soon after takeoff, the Har-de-Bees took ground station in South Africa, received the all-important signal indicating that EarthCare is safely in orbit around Earth. The satellite is now being controlled from ESA's European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany. Controllers will spend the next few months carefully checking and calibrating the mission as part of the commissioning phase. Over to China now, and commercial company Galactic Energy launched their second sea-based mission of its series one rocket earlier today. The spacecraft lifted off from a mobile launch platform from the Yellow Sea off the eastern province of Shandong, and then sent four satellites into an orbit about 850 kilometers above the Earth. According to Galactic Energy, the satellites were built by Guo Jian-gao-ke, which is a Beijing-based private satellite operator, for its Tianqi network, and will be used to collect data for the Internet of Things. China has seen an increase in sea-based launches in the last few years, with today's series one launch marking the 11th overall. And staying in China, Chinese AI satellite company StarVision has announced a partnership with Oman's Lens LLC to collaborate on urban planning, infrastructure management, and emergency preparedness. The company's plan to develop an advanced digital twin city platform, aiming to reshape the landscape of Earth observation with artificial intelligence and satellite technology. According to StarVision, the platform will use AI and satellite imagery to develop 3D models for building detection, green cover analysis, and road mapping, among other applications. Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund has launched the NeoSpace Group. The NeoSpace Group, or NSG, is the public investment fund's first investment focused on the space industry. In a statement with the announcement, PIF said it aims to develop and enhance commercial space operations in Saudi Arabia, providing innovative satellite and space solutions locally and globally. It also plans to invest in localization, technology, startups, and knowledge in the space and satellite sector in Saudi Arabia, in the latest move to boost economic diversification. Voyager Space, Airbus, and Mitsubishi Corporation have welcomed MDA Space as a strategic partner and equity owner in StarLabs Space. The US, European, Japanese, and Canadian industry partners aim to enable the continuation of the International Space Station partnership via commercial entities. MDA Space brings space robotics and human spaceflight heritage to StarLabs and will play a pivotal role in the commercial space station's development. Redwire Corporation is expanding investment in the company's artificial intelligence strategy by funding research projects through a newly formed coalition focused on the use of AI in space operations. Now Redwire is one of the two founding corporate sponsors of the Center for Aerospace Autonomy Research, or CSER, as it's also called, at Stanford University. Now CSER is a new collaboration between industry, academia, and government that seeks to advance autonomous reasoning in space vehicles through AI, machine learning, and other disciplines. Redwire is looking to apply AI across its technology portfolio, including modeling and simulation, robotics technology, satellite servicing, intelligent vision systems, and in future work on power management and avionics. Following last week's partnership announcement with AT&T, AST Space Mobile is increasing its planned connectivity with a new partnership with Verizon. The company's announced a strategic partnership with a commitment of $100 million from Verizon to provide direct to cellular AST Space Mobile service when needed for Verizon customers. AST Space Mobile has agreements with more than 45 mobile network operators globally who collectively serve over 2.8 billion existing subscribers. The company is planning on launching their first satellites later this year. Speaking of satellites, IntelSat has implemented a dual satellite connectivity solution for PLOW, delivering reliable, always-on service for PLOW's 18,000 inhabitants who live across nine islands in the main archipelago. The PLOW National Communications Corporation previously relied on a single undersea fiber optic cable for all communications needs. IntelSat's solution for PLOW uses two IntelSat geostationary satellites in separate orbital slots. And that's it for our briefing for today. The selected reading of our show notes includes links to further reading on all the stories that I've mentioned in today's report. We've also included a few extras for you. One's an announcement from Terran Orbital on expanding their leadership. And we've also included a contract awards announcement from the US Space Force. Hey T-minus crew, if you find this podcast useful, please do us a favor and share a five-star rating and a short review in your favorite podcast app. It'll help other space professionals like you to find the show and join the T-minus crew. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. We're doing something a little different today. My guests today are women in cybersecurity executive director Lynn Dome and N2K's Simone Petrella, Dr. Heather Munthy and Jeff Welgan. We're going to be discussing the 2024 Cyber Talent Study. Now, the full discussion and results of the study will be available on our sister podcast, The Cyber Wire Daily, next week. And today, we're sharing a short segment of that discussion. One of the biggest challenges that we have in the profession, and we talk about cyber workforce as an industry, is around data collection. And so there's lots of opportunities to sort of understand and collect data on, you know, what positions are out there or how many openings are there for jobs. But where you start to, I think one of the things that was most exciting to us is that with working with WESIS, you can look at that external data around what are the roles people are filling in, what are they in. But then you're now looking at, you're collecting another data input around the performance of the individuals themselves, and you can compare them against that role. And so that's really powerful because you're turning pure data collection into insights that like the individual members can use to understand where they want to go. But then we as organizations can kind of get a better sense of what is the impact of these, you know, of where women go. How do we think about how to keep them in the field? What does that pathway look like? So that's just, you know, data. Everyone likes to talk about data and machine learning and AI, but that's where it really becomes compelling. Yeah, and organizational change can happen after that point. Yeah, go ahead, Lynn. Yeah, and another great, and thank you for this, Simone, is because another great area for us as a nonprofit sitting in this space is it helps us identify areas of growth opportunity and some gaps. And how could we as a nonprofit build programs to help bridge that gap and help overcome some of those challenges that are identified here? So not only is an opportunity for our RISIS members to participate in the actual assessment and study, but also as a way for us as a nonprofit to be able to develop very intentional programming for helping overcome some of the challenges. Fantastic. And members of RISIS and people who took this specific study, one could argue that they're more career motivated. They, in a way, sort of self-selected, one could say. But at the same time, I imagine we could also extrapolate the findings from this study and think about how it can apply to women across the cyber workforce in general. I'm just curious, any thoughts on that? Maybe Heather, I haven't heard as much from you. Maybe any thoughts on that there? Yeah, I think this goes to show just that when we're looking at recruiting, attracting, and retaining cybersecurity talent, when you're trying to build a diverse team, you've got to look at some of the things that make qualified applicants self-select out. So out of that hiring process. And so while we see in this diagnostic, we see in the data that women are excelling in a lot of different areas within cybersecurity. But when we start putting out job descriptions where we're looking at a level one or level two analyst type of role, and we're listing out 15, 20 different pieces of software they want to have somebody to have experience with. And maybe the mindset is, let's just put this out there and see what we get. Let's see who applies. The issue is that women look at that in general. Women look at that and go, "I don't need 100% of these requirements, so I'm not even going to bother applying." And so they self-select out. So by really understanding where the workforce is, where we see the strong points of the women in cybersecurity members, the WESIS members, and then really having that understanding of how we do our hiring process. When we're looking at, okay, we need to get more people in the door, we need to get more qualified people applying for these jobs. How do we do that? So what can we change about our recruiting process? What can we change about our job descriptions so that they're more attractive to the right people versus we're just going to shoot for a unicorn and see what we get? Yeah, it's a familiar issue in not just in cyber, but in a lot of tech world jobs as well, that whole unicorn hunting phenomenon. So a question to the group. I'm always curious when we do studies like this about things that might have surprised you from the results. Anyone find anything surprising from these results that you were really just like, wow, that's interesting? Jeff, was that you? Yeah, yeah. I mean, one, I think the outperformance was surprising. I think this is not an easy diagnostic. It's very difficult. So to see across all nice categories was surprising. You'd expect maybe some here and some there, but 100%, that was surprising. I think the other thing that leaves me questioning and hungry for more information is around representation. Because when we looked at the representation of WESIS members who took this and we're asking them, well, what field or what functional area do you associate with? We see really low representation in operational technology and engineering and in data engineering and analytics. Now, you could make an argument that maybe those are smaller functional fields in cybersecurity, so maybe the smaller representation there, it correlates to just the broader cybersecurity field. I don't think, I don't know, but I don't think that's the case. I mean, we only had three members and our 399 participants who identified in operational technology and engineering. And we're talking about ICS SCADA systems. And just based on experience, working with people in those roles, they're male dominated subsets of the field. So I'm really interested in figuring out that a little bit more and just kind of learning a little bit more about how is that true? Do we have a real big deficit in those areas? And if so, what can we do to help promote more diversity in these niche parts of the cybersecurity industry? That's a great point. That makes me think of a whole bunch of possible cultural reasons that could contribute to that, but I won't conjecture since this is not my study. Yeah, but Simone, I see that you wanted to add something as well. Yeah, well, one thing that surprised me and yet didn't surprise me at the same time was we obviously saw a kind of a really high volume of respondents that identified as more junior in their roles. And that was, you know, across the board, especially in technical roles. And I will caveat this to say it's hard to tell from the data whether because we had a separate management and leadership category, whether everyone kind of flowed over there. But it did strike me to see how much the levels of technical identification in roles that are technical in nature, like at the junior level, like it started to drop off. And we saw less and less representation at the mid and senior levels. And I know something that Lynn and I have talked about and Wiesis is incredibly passionate about is the idea of when are women selecting out in the middle of their journey in cybersecurity as a profession? And why are they choosing to leave? And there's all kinds of cultural phenomenons and things like that. But the reason I found that so interesting is because it's not only around the membership and the women who are part of Wiesis, but it's about all those corporate partners and like the industry that and the ecosystem that surrounds it to say, what do we do? What do we now need to do or what do we need to promote so that organizations are prepared to support the development of individuals and women in particular and anyone in a minority once they're on that career journey. And that's not just support in technical training or career pathing. All those are important too. But then what are the cultural implications? How do you prevent them from wanting to step away potentially from the workforce? Yeah, sort of like once they're we're trying to get people through the door. But once they're in what happens next and people kind of go, I don't know, not much left for me there. Yeah, Lynn, please go ahead. You're having these conversations every day. So I'm so curious to hear your thoughts. Yeah. And that's why it's really important to have more data and to be able to dig in deeper into this information is for our employer partners to really put intentional actions in place to, you know, to avoid these pitfalls that women are experiencing in their career and to piggyback on our state of inclusion assessment. It is showing that women are experiencing that glass ceiling around six to 10 years within their career. So what are we doing to overcome this challenges? And now we have data to help support what we've always heard, you know, what we've always heard all along. And now we finally have some data and some real good valuable insights to share with others so that we could start, you know, making a difference. So follow up question for you, Lynn, then. Recommendations to organizations. And we've touched on this a little bit, but truly, I mean, this is not some on an individual to take on and be like, I'm going to change everything. We need organizations to really step up and make some big changes. So what do organizations need to know? Organizations need to listen to this podcast and to understand that this is a launching pad. Like this is an opportunity for them to take the information from the cyber talent study and utilize it as a tool and to be able to understand that these are the main areas and pinpoint those challenges and to start really having these conversations about what are we going to look at our internal talent to ensure that they're not stuck in these common pitfalls that are being identified. Also, if you valence the diverse talent that are on your teams at around five to six years of an individual being in their career to ensure that they have a very clear career growth and advancement mapped out in front of them. And as a direct manager to those individuals that they're being very, you know, they're paying attention. They're paying attention to the data that's being reported. And if the value of their team is really crucial to them, then they would really pay attention to their career growth ahead of them as well. Any other advice for organizations in terms of takeaways here? I want to see Simone, go ahead. Totally agree with Lynn. Everyone should listen to this podcast. So let's get it out there. You know, to sort of add on to that, you know, organizations, you know, I'm going to throw the gauntlet at organizations to say those that are investing in talent development, they are, you know, sponsoring organizations and events that are committed to this, you have to then be able to also invest the time and the attention internally to be able to absorb it and fried that career path. And I think it's really easy for organizations to say, we're going to put our name on this and we're going to do it. But then they're not committing to actually executing on the strategic vision to make that a reality and actually move the needle when it comes to changing the dynamic of women in the cybersecurity workforce. So, you know, my recommendation to them is, you know, forward to the partnerships, create the relationships, but then do the work internally to understand what is your cybersecurity talent strategy. It is the largest operating expense that you have in your budget. I don't care how much money you have for tech. Biggest operating expense you have is in people. So you are already wasting money and you can spend it more efficiently for the little bit that you have if you actually come up with a plan for them. [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. It is admittedly an overused expression that space is the ultimate team sport, but the sentiment still stands. It's accurate. Despite many geopolitical problems, space remains a neutral area where all people of Earth can get along and long may that continue. And that's why today, May 29th, we are marking the 15th anniversary of the first time all partners were represented aboard the International Space Station. For May 29th to July 17th, 2009, each of the five partner agencies participating in the International Space Station program, and that would be NASA, JAXA, ESA, Canada's CSA and Roscosmos, while they each had a crew member living and working aboard the orbiting facility at the same time. The period also marked the beginning of six-person crew habitation, greatly increasing the time available for utilization. The addition of the International Partner Elements and life support systems to enable the larger crew size made this 49-day event possible. And although International Partner Crew Members routinely live and work aboard the station, for this one event, its crew size was now expanded to seven. Having all the partners represented at the same time actually remains a unique event in the space station's history. Long May collaboration and partnership in space remain. That's it for T-Minus for May 29th, 2024, brought to you by N2K CyberWire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. You can email us at space@n2k.com or submit the survey and the show notes. Your feedback ensures we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. N2K Strategic Workforce Intelligence optimizes the value of your biggest investment, your people. We make you smarter about your team while making your team smarter. This episode was produced by Ellis Carouse. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We are mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilby is our publisher. And I'm your host, Marie-Ovar Mazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]