Panic at the D(i)SC(o).

It was 5.38pm central time and all was quiet on the International Space Station. Astronauts were resting ahead of a planned spacewalk and the YouTube channel broadcasting live coverage of the happenings on the orbiting lab was calm. Until it wasn't. What did that audio just say? Get the commander back in his suit, check his pulse and provide him with oxygen. What is happening? T-minus. 20 seconds to alloy. T-minus. Today's June 13th, 2024. I'm Maria Varmasus and this is T-minus. NASA causes a little bit of panic with mis-routed audio. ISS astronaut spacewalk canceled due to space suit discomfort. Armenia signs the Artemis Accords. And our guest today is artist Tim Gagnon. Now, Tim has been on the show before and this time he's back to tell us about being in the NASA and Boeing social as part of the Starliner launch. And he shares details with us about his experience later in the show. [Music] Let's dive into today's Intel Briefing, shall we? And just imagine tuning into NASA's YouTube channel to watch the ongoing happenings on the ISS live, only to hear this alarming audio. If we could get a commander back in his suit, get it sealed and fault-step into procedure 5-thesimal-180 for suited hyperbared treatment. Section 3 for oxygen post-blashtown, that would be my recommendation. Understand that this is a best effort treatment and so whatever you can do is going to be better than doing nothing. And just as an FYI, prior to feeling, closing the visor and pressurizing the suit, I would like you to check his pulse one more time. Fifth, you're on this call. How much oxygen do we have remaining in minutes? Perfect. So yes, then I would like you to have 100% O2 flowing via mask while you get the suit on. Prior to closing the visor and pressurizing, I'd like you to do a pulse check one more time and then step into 5-thesimal-180, Section 3. Is there a way that we could get the suit over the head, have the visor open and put the mask at least close to his face while you finish sealing up the suit or is that not feasible? I think at this point, because the hypobaric exposure is the big problem and given his exam, I am concerned that there are some severe DCS hits and so I would recommend trying to get him in the suit as soon as possible and giving oxygen as best as able during that process, but the best thing would be to get him in the suit at ASAP. Yes, the audio clearly described a DCS incident or decompression sickness. What the heck is going on? Well, nobody panic please because the audio, while it is quite real, the situation was not. It seems this was all a case of a wrong audio connection. Savvy social media folks were quick to share the audio across different media platforms with the alarming thought that there was a serious problem on the International Space Station, but the ISSX account quickly responded to alleviate anxious space fans stating this audio was inadvertently misrouted from an ongoing simulation where crew members and ground teams trained for various scenarios in space and is not related to a real emergency. We imagine that heads are rolling at mission control as NASA scrambles to figure out how exactly this happened. Not to kick anyone while they're down though, let's all spare a thought for the ISSCOMs team who doubtless are not having a good time right now. And in amongst all that chaos, a planned spacewalk was cancelled for real, adding fuel to the fire yesterday. Though NASA was quick to point out that the cancellation was due to a spacesuit discomfort issue. Oh yes, this ugly issue again. NASA astronauts Tracey Dyson and Matt Dominick completed taking off their spacesuits about an hour before the crew was anticipated to exit the Quest airlock. No further details have been shared by NASA about what exactly the discomfort was due to. There's nothing to see here folks. The ISSX account reminds us that quote, "There is no emergency situation going on aboard the International Space Station, so everybody on space social media, please calm down." Moving on from all the kerfuffle. And now Armenia has become the 43rd Artemis Accord signatory. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson welcomed Armenia as the newest nation to sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony with the U.S. State Department at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. The NASA-led Artemis Accords identifies an early set of principles promoting the beneficial use of space for humanity. And speaking of NASA, the U.S. Space Agency has selected Raytheon to provide three instruments and related services for the Landsat Next mission. The contract includes a Cost+ Award fee base period and a Cost+ Fixed Fee option period with a total value of $506.7 million. Raytheon will provide the design, engineering analysis, algorithms, fabrication, testing, delivery, and support for the Landsat Next instruments. And the work will be primarily performed at the contractor's facilities in El Segundo, California. The Landsat Next mission is a partnership between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey to advance Earth-observing technologies, science, and applications under the Sustainable Land Imaging Program to more effectively map, monitor, and manage America's land, water, and coastal resources. After the success of the Climate Monitoring Prefire mission, NASA has selected RTX's Blue Canyon to build two 12-view CubeSat buses for NASA's Pulsier mission. The Pulsier instrument, which stands for Polarized Sub-millimeter Ice Cloud Radiometer, will observe high-altitude ice clouds to improve climate forecasts and provide climate models with important insights on how Earth's atmosphere will change in the future. In addition to designing and manufacturing the bus platforms, Blue Canyon will also provide mission operation services. Over to Europe now. TELUS, SPIRE Global, and European Satellite Services provider known as ESSP have signed a memorandum of cooperation with the goal of developing a satellite-based air traffic management system. The system will use a constellation of over 100 satellites collecting automatic, dependent surveillance broadcast messages, which are sent from aircraft, transmitting the data back to Earth in real time. SPIRE will develop the space segment, including system design, building the satellites and payloads, ground control, and data collection. TELUS will provide the ground air traffic management system and the service supervision infrastructure, and ESSP will manage the certification and delivery of the service for air traffic surveillance purposes and perform 24-hour operation and supervision. The partners will also rely on the Space Alliance, formed by TELUS-Alenia Space and TELUS-Basio, to identify and implement possible synergies, bringing further added value to the partnership. The partners plan to certify, commercialize, and start the operation of the service by 2027. The exploration company has signed a cargo services agreement for a 2028 mission to VAST's second Haven space station. The new cargo agreement between VAST and the exploration company expands cooperation in human spaceflight between the American and European space industries, enabling a research-based economy in low Earth orbit. The European Space Agency's marketplace has awarded contracts to German companies Consteller and Vioma as part of the Scale-Up Invest Program. The ESA marketplace aims to accelerate the commercialization of space technologies and drive innovation in Europe, and is designed to support commercially driven pioneering space projects. ESA will co-finance the launch of the company's satellites, and EXO Launch will facilitate the launch missions with Consteller and Vioma. Saudi Arabia's Luna Space Telecommunications Company has purchased a Hughes Network Systems Jupiter System Gateway, as well as 1,200 Hughes-Jupiter terminals to transform its VSAT network. Leveraging the latest HughesNet technology, Luna Space aims to provide customers with higher speeds and throughput, reaching more of the kingdom's unserved and underserved areas. In other business news, Leo Labs has been selected by AF Works for a Sibberphase II contract in the amount of $1.245 million. The contract is focused on the S-band 2D direct radiating array, which the press release says addresses the most pressing challenges in the Department of the Air Force. And two men who identified themselves as SpaceX employees have retrieved several pieces of fallen debris believed to be from the trunk of a Crew Dragon spacecraft in Saskatchewan, Canada. You might remember those stories from earlier shows. The retrieval comes months after the space junk first landed in farmers' fields, and now eight pieces have been found in all on five different farms within a 30-kilometer radius in rural Canada. SpaceX, however, has not provided a public statement on the matter, and the employees, or the so-called employees, anyway, told residents that they were hauling the debris back to their offices. Hmm, can you imagine if this turns out to be a big social engineering scam and those pieces end up on online sales sites that I won't mention? Anyway, keep your ears open for my next story on hacking humans if that ends up being the case. And that concludes our briefing for today. Head to the selected reading section of our show notes for further information on all of the stories that we've mentioned. We've also included an announcement from Virgin Galactic to effect a reverse-stock split, details on AWS's $20 million commitment for generative AI startups, and a story about lawmakers' skepticism of the Space Force's resilient GPS program. AT-MINUS crew, if your business is looking to grow your voice in the industry, expand the reach of your thought leadership, or recruit talent, AT-MINUS can help. We'd love to hear from you. Send us an email at space@entuk.com, or send us a note through our website so we can connect about building a program to meet your goals. [Music] Our guest today is space artist Tim Gagnon, best known for his space mission patch designs. And Tim was invited to participate in the NASA and Boeing social media event ahead of the Starliner launch, and he came on the show to tell us more about his experience. When NASA conducts a mission, they will host a social, because they have come to understand the value of including people that are active on social media. And what they'll do, they'll make the announcement about the social, and then people will apply as long as it fits into their general schedule. A large number of people generally apply. I have applied three previous times, and because of my previous involvement doing a patch for the Starliner NASA mission operations team, I was really interested in seeing the mission fly. So I put in an application, and I don't set any records with social followers, but I figured, take a shot, you know, darned if I didn't get accepted. I was so thrilled to hear that you got accepted, because, I mean, what a cool mission Starliner is, and we've all been waiting for it to happen, and you're such a great, and I mean this in the best possible way, a great cheerleader for all the cool things that are happening in space. And I just love, I love your posts on social media, I love learning about the art that you've done and the people that you've met. So hearing that you were going to see Starliner fly was like, for me as a person who knows you, at least through social media, I was like, that is a perspective I really was interested in seeing and hearing about. So you got to see Starliner fly, you know, again, delayed for reasons beyond everyone's control. Thankfully, everybody's safe and sound. You sent a bunch of pictures from the Vehicle Assembly Building, which is like a dream of mine to step foot in that one day. My nickname for the VAB is the Notre Dame of Space Exploration, because when you walk in that central aisle, and you see the expanse of the inside of that building, it's almost like a space. Almost a religious experience, because if you think of the hundreds and thousands of people that have worked there over the last 60 years, building it, prepping spaceships to fly and so forth, you know, that building has a soul to me. Of course, I look at things like an artist does, you know, I would love it if you can see in the end of that aisle where you see the sunlight coming through the window. I would love that to be like a stained glass window. I would love to create a painting where that is a stained glass window. And that might be a future project. Who knows? Well, let's put it out into the universe, because I would love to see that like a rose window to space. Can you imagine such a beautiful thing? That would be just stunning. I'm just going to go through some of the pictures because I see the crawler also. There are two crawlers. There was one inside the building that they're working on. And it was used to take the Artemis 1 rocket to the pad. It took the launch tower to the pad. They're doing some work out there and then it returned for servicing. And then there is another crawler whose fate is undetermined at this point. So I'm going to go through a sort of group, a bunch of pictures together where you've met a bunch of folks. I won't steal the glory of saying who it is. I'll let you reveal the amazing people that you met. Well, at the first day, the day we went to the VAB and all that, the schedule allowed us to stop for lunch. And we were in the cafeteria essentially across the street from the VAB. And who was having lunch there? But NASA administrator Bill Nelson. He's a very generous, nice guy. Yeah, I just love how it's just like, kind of like, "Hey, buddy. Here's Bill Nelson." Just like, "Hey, good to see you." So you also met a number of astronauts when you told me who you met, Jawdrop. Yeah, we were very surprised. The morning of the launch, because the original launch was supposed to happen late at night, the morning of the launch, before they started fueling, they took us to pad 41. So we got to see the Atlas V with Starliner on it up close, which was very cool. And then they surprised us with some guests. And who comes walking down the walkway from the VIV is three-fourths of the Artemis crew. And the fourth astronaut in the pictures is station astronaut Bob Hines. And it was a nice surprise. None of us expected that. And they were happy to pose for pictures, answer questions, and we really had a very cool experience. That's so cool. So it was everybody but Christina, basically. Yeah, she was on another assignment. And it's funny, you see the pictures, that picture I sent you of the guys walking towards us, we're all standing in the front of our bus. And of course, our attention is right at them. Well, up from behind us comes Victor Glover. And he just comes up, joins the group, holds up his cell phone to take a picture. And then people realized he was standing right with us. And some of the folks lost it there. That was a lot of fun. I bet, honestly, meaning any of them, I think a lot of us would, justifiably, in my case, fangirl. And I think it's completely understandable. That alone would be really cool. But you also, as you mentioned, you got to see the Atlas V with Starliner top. You did get really close. So can you just tell me a bit about that experience, seeing it so up close? Well, you're still probably the better part of almost a mile away, because they have a perimeter fence. The media was there setting up their cameras around the pad. And a rocket looks a lot bigger, even when you're that close. When you see a launch, the closest you can be is three and a half miles away. And there are other pictures that show that rocket much smaller. So to have the opportunity to see it that close, and of course, they had to do it before any hazardous activity was going on. They weren't going to let us stand there as they were fueling it. So that was, I mean, it was very impressive. I mean, the very first rocket I had ever seen from such a perspective was the Apollo 17 Saturn V. Oh, well. So I was a little bit jaded. I knew what to expect, as they said, because we're going to drive out to the pad. Well, I've driven out to the pad before. But all these people that I'm with, they're all newbies. So I was feeding off of their excitement. And, you know, and they were saying, I, we're going out to the pad. I said, yeah, you wait. Do you see, you know, because it's going to be very cool. Yeah. Well, I mean, having seen a Saturn V in person, I mean, that is, I mean, especially that close. I mean, it's hard to imagine what could top that. But still, I mean, seeing any, any rocket that's going to send humans to space, I think, is on its own, just incredible. And so the question I think it's sort of burning a hole in my mind is, given that Starliner had to get bumped a couple of times, how did, how did you all handle that? I mean, that's hardly just, I mean, I know you live nearby, but how did I live nearby? So when they sent out the email that the launch had been delayed to such and such a date, I immediately responded, you launch it whenever I will be there because all I had to do was drive, you know, 12 miles to the badging station. But other people, you know, had to, to bow out because, you know, either they were on leave from work or, you know, they had set up their trip, you know, for sure, some days extension. But, you know, Starliner got bumped a couple of times. And so by the time they actually launched, we probably had about a third of our group that is original. And I felt bad for them because I know what it's like. I mean, Apollo 17, they're 30 seconds from launch and they had a hold. And because the third stage on that rocket, the telemetry didn't say it was pressurized. It had been, it was a bad reading, and they eventually worked around it. But I'm pacing like a guy about to have puppies because I'm 16 years old. I came all this way to see this thing launch and it's not going. So I mean, I understand their feeling, you know, to be this close to the actual experience and not get to do it. So I hope, I know they'll get other opportunities and I hope that, you know, the universe is kind and they get to actually see a launch. Yeah, I have always wondered about, I've never seen one in person mainly because I live so far away from where launches happen and scrubs happen a lot. So I just, I know it's just hard if you're not local to be able to have that time flexibility. I'm glad that you were able to see it though because the last picture that you sent me was of the launch. So I know you've seen a bunch, but how was this one? Well, it was the first flight of a crewed vehicle. So that's always very special. And I know a lot of the folks that worked on it. I've lived in the area for 30 plus years. So, you know, your neighbors are people that work at SpaceX or they work at Boeing or they work at Blue Origin. So you understand the frustration when things don't go right, but it's such an unforgiving business that everything has to go right. And to be perfectly fair, the two scrubs were not caused by anything that Boeing built. It was ground equipment that was built and maintained by United Launch Alliance, you know. And the Atlas V is one of the most reliable rockets that we've ever launched. So, you know, things do happen. It can happen to anybody and it will eventually. I mean, you know, it's a hard business and it's very exacting and you have to be perfect. And when you're putting people on board, you have to be really perfect. We'll be right back. Welcome back. And we're rounding up today's show with some congratulatory news from the United States Military Academy West Point. The Military Academy has its first astronaut scholar. Cadet Zoe Winston, class of 2025, will receive the largest merit-based monetary scholarship awarded to undergraduate STEM juniors and seniors by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, also known as ASF. ASF was originally created by astronauts of the Mercury 7 mission. It funds scholarships for college students in science, technology, engineering, and math across the United States. The Foundation seeks to inspire, encourage, and facilitate astronaut scholars to embody the highly respected astronaut characteristics that they identify as intelligence, ambition, self-motivation, high ethical standards, persistence, tenacity, adaptability, and a passion for science, exploration, and innovation. The selected recipient, Cadet Zoe Winston, is a Mathematical Sciences major from Virginia. She conducts research in the realm of biostatistics specifically. She uses statistical approaches to study cellular metabolism, looking to identify clinical biomarkers to be used for an earlier diagnosis of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, the leading cause of maternal mortality. In the future, she hopes to impact maternal health care through a lifetime of research and working to improve the inclusivity and size of maternal health studies. Winston hopes to pursue a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biostatistics and serve as an officer in the Adjutant General Corps. What a worthy recipient of this scholarship. Congratulations again to Cadet Zoe Winston. [Music] That's it for T-Minus for June 13th, 2024, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. For privilege 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, the many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies. This episode was produced by Ellis Caruth, our associate producer's 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 Kilpie is our publisher. And I'm your host, Maria Varmausis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] T-Minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]