Et tu, Eumetsat?

It's not long now until Area 6 is expected to launch. July 9 is the date on the schedule. It's Europe's next flagship launch vehicle, and there are high hopes for this rocket to get the next generation of European spacecraft to orbit. And that is why it was a big, big punch in the gut when a major customer, who signed up for an Area 6 launch four years ago, suddenly backed out of the deal. And to make matters worse, they're switching to SpaceX. Today is July 1, 2024. Happy Canada Day! I'm Maria Varmausis, and this is T-minus. We met Sat Vax out from the Area 6. There's no set return date for Starliner, a successful launch for Japan's H3, and our guest today is Brian Barnett, CEO of Solestar Space, and he's speaking with me today on the OuterNet and Wi-Fi for spacecraft. Happy Monday, everyone! Let's get into our Intel briefing, shall we? A doozy of a story dropped late last Friday, and you might have missed it over the weekend. You Met Sat, the European Weather Satellite Agency, says they're switching the 2025 launch of its Mediosat 3rd Generation Sounder 1 weather satellite from the Arian Group's Area 6 to a SpaceX Falcon 9 instead. In a terse statement on their website, you met Sat posted a notice of this change, as well as a brief quote from you met Sat Director General Phil Evans, saying this, "This decision was driven by exceptional circumstances. It does not compromise our standard policy of supporting European partners, and we look forward to a successful SpaceX launch for this masterpiece of European technology." No further explanation was given on what those exceptional circumstances might entail, and for their part, Arian Group and leaders in European space don't seem to be buying this explanation. Reactions to the announcement, especially with the timing of the first Arian 6 launch on July 9th, are a mix of betrayal and incredulity. Philippe Baptiste, head of CNES in France, wrote this in response to the news, "I am impatiently waiting to understand what reasons could have led you Met Sat to such a decision at a time when all major European space countries, as well as the European Commission, are calling for launching European satellites on European launchers." We'll definitely be keeping an eye on this story as it continues to develop. And after holding a press conference on Friday, NASA and Boeing announced that they've extended the first crewed flight of Starliner in order to conduct additional thruster testing on the ground. And meanwhile, astronauts Butch Wilmar and Sonny Williams are definitely not stranded on the International Space Station. Nope, no, no they are not. Their mission, originally planned for nine days, has now lasted 24 days and counting, with no return date yet set by NASA. NASA's Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stitch said this, "We are not in any rush to come home." And it is worth noting that as funny as this story can be sometimes, Starliner's battery can last for about 45 days, so yeah, things are not dire. Thruster testing meanwhile is happening this week at White Sands, New Mexico to replicate thruster issues experienced during approach to the ISS. And the data collected from these tests are crucial for ensuring the spacecraft's performance and presumably, the crew's safe return. Japan's Space Agency JAXA successfully launched its new flagship H-3 rocket earlier today, deploying the advanced Daiichi-4 satellite into orbit. This marks a significant milestone for the H-3, as this was its third launch attempt and its first successful launch, notably following a previous failed attempt last year where a second stage failure forced a self-destruct of the rocket. JAXA plans to launch six H-3 rockets annually as it also phases out its previous workhorse, the older H-2A model. As for the payload, the Daiichi-4, it is designed for high-resolution Earth observation and it'll monitor natural disasters and track ships, enhancing Japan's space capabilities and its national security. And an item now from our friends at the Cyber Wire. Sysa, the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency, has put out a notice regarding four critical vulnerabilities found in Telsat, Marconi's Marconi-D and Marconi-DH FM transmitters. These vulnerabilities have low attack complexity, can be remotely exploited, and exploits for these vulnerabilities are already publicly available. Sysa have successfully exploited an attacker could tamper with the transmitters or perform a remote code execution. On a severity scale out of 10, Sysa ranks each of the four vulnerabilities a 9.8. Sysa also urges anyone with these systems to patch to the latest Marconi firmware ASAP, and in the meantime to ensure any affected transmitters are isolated from business networks and either are only accessed via VPN or not connected to the internet at all. The link to the official Sysa notice is in the show notes for you. The Space Exploration and Research Agency, or CERA, announced that it's collaborating with Blue Origin to launch up to six citizen astronauts from India to space. Not much information yet on who might be going, though one of the six citizen astronaut candidates will apparently be selected by public vote. SpaceX racked up another international customer over the weekend, not just you, Metsat. The ASAT of the United Arab Emirates has selected the SpaceX Falcon 9 to be its ride for its upcoming Aliyah 4 and Aliyah 5 geostationary satellites in 2027 and 2028. The full cost of this launch contract was not disclosed, but it is part of a $1.1 billion U.S. satellite procurement contract, some of which is already going to Airbus to build out these two satellites. CNS has awarded two in-orbit services missions to Infinite Orbits and Telespazio France, marking a significant milestone for both companies and the French new space sector. The missions, one for inspection and another for life extension, aimed to demonstrate rendezvous and docking capabilities for satellites in geostationary orbit by 2026. The life extension mission involves the Endurance Servicer, which will dock with an end-of-life telecoms commercial satellite, manage its station keeping for five years, and then dispose of it. The inspection mission for its part will be carried out by Orbit Guard #3 and will perform a near-range rendezvous and proximity inspection of UMetsat's Meteo 8, which is a "tumbling and non-cooperative satellite." Should these missions prove successful, Infinite Orbits and Telespazio France say they hope they will "shape the future of in-orbit services." And staying in Europe, the Committee on Space Research, or COSPAR, has opened the COSPAR International Space Innovation Center in Nicosia, Cyprus. The center is co-funded by the EU, the Research and Innovation Foundation, Cyprus, and the Translational Research Institute for Space Health. And it is meant to enable global cooperation in space research and innovation, including predicting adverse solar events, advancing atmospheric modeling for Mars, Earth, and Venus, and improving our understanding of the health challenges of human deep space exploration. And that is it for our briefing for this Monday. As always, links are in our show notes for your reading pleasure. And we've got a few extras for you. One's a peer-reviewed study on the desert moss that might be able to grow on Mars. And another is an announcement from Rescale about its HPC modernization program. AT-Minus crew, every Monday we produce a written intelligence roundup. And it is 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 and space in our show notes or at space.n2k.com. [MUSIC] Our guest today is Brian Barnett, CEO of Solestar Space. And before we dive into the outer net and Wi-Fi and space, I asked Brian to tell us a bit about himself. [MUSIC] My name is Brian Barnett. I began my career at NASA. I wanted to be an astronaut, you know, since I was a boy. And I got to see the Apollo landings. People my age, they would bring the TVs into the classroom. And we saw the launches and landings. And we all wanted to be astronauts pretty much. I'm one of the guys who actually went down that path. So I also, I specialized in my whole career in commercial space, private development of space. That really caught my interest when I was at University of Oklahoma, where I got my undergraduate. And I studied science and business there. I read this article on the cover of Time Magazine when I was in college about this concept, you know, called commercial space or space business. And that really caught my attention. During a spring break, I drove down to Houston to meet the people I read about in the articles, which were people who were starting the first commercial space companies in Houston. And I went and interviewed with them, you know, looking for a job in the commercial space industry way back then. I met Deke Slayton, who was one of the original astronauts selected by NASA, the right stuff astronauts. And he had started the first private rocket company. So I went and talked to him and he didn't have jobs, but he made phone calls for me to get interviews at NASA. That led to my first job at NASA. I worked on space shuttle experiments and payloads. That's where I learned payload integration. I worked on astronaut crew training for the space lab missions, which were precursor for the space station. I got my MBA and I decided to join commercial space practice of KPMG consulting. We were kind of the go-to firm back then in the 90s to do anything related to commercial space. So we were specializing in satellite communications because late 90s and early 2000s is the first wave of commercial satellite communications constellations, which we're seeing proliferate again now. So I thought this would be a good time to start a company. I had decided to start a commercial satellite communications company. And that was in 1999. So this is my third company, Solstar Space Company, which now is focused on space communications using commercial satellite networks to provide connectivity to people and things in space. Wow. Thank you for walking me through your incredible career. You have so much experience in commercial space and that you're an entrepreneur who's spun up three businesses. That's really impressive. So please tell me a bit more about Solstar Space. Solstar Space is a space communications company. And the world, so to speak, is moving towards commercial space communications. So space communications has been provided by governments. NASA TDRS satellites, that's the tracking and data relay satellites, are being retired. So now there's going to be a great need for commercial satellite communications to... I combined my satellite communications experience with my NASA experience to form this company. I spun it out of another company and focused specifically on what's called on orbit communications. So space to space communications providing basically a satellite internet link between spacecraft for instance or people in the ground operating their spacecraft or trying to do something in space remotely from the ground. And so we're building products and services to provide that commercial connectivity. We've been working on this for over 10 years. So you're starting to hear about it. It's called different things like OuterNet, that's what you're hearing. So we're really one of the key players that's going to make that happen. I'm fascinated by the OuterNet. I love learning about what's being built. And I think one of the things that's so fascinating to me is the pace of innovation that is happening for the spacecraft that are forming the OuterNet, but also sort of the backbone of all the different applications, what we're going to be doing with the OuterNet. It just seems to be developing so quickly. And I imagine that must be sort of like a fun challenge for companies like Solstar to be figuring out how to meet those challenges and how to make sure that you can support those applications. Yeah, it's really nice because we've been working on this for over 10 years. Now we're seeing the market catch up with us, so to speak. And so that's really gratifying to see our thesis basically is now becoming pretty much a hot topic. Solstar is most well known for we are the company that provided the first ever commercial Wi-Fi hotspot inside of the spacecraft. And we did that a few years ago on board Blue Origin's New Shepherd. And so we had a hotspot inside of the crew capsule, the one you see everybody flying up lately. And we had a satellite link to it. So we had a satellite link on the launch pad all the way up in space and all the way down. We kept a commercial satellite link. And so this is the first time that had been done. While we were up there, we used our own board computer to post the first commercial tweet from space. And that got us a lot of attention. Now because we were successful, that was the first commercial Wi-Fi in space, anybody who needs to use Wi-Fi in space or provide Wi-Fi in space are coming to Solstar. Wi-Fi is becoming a standard in space. And on the art of this program, for instance, going back to the moon, everything is required to have Wi-Fi. So the landers that are coming down, the lunar gateway, which will be orbiting the moon, the lunar rovers, and even the space that have to be Wi-Fi enabled. So we're combining the satellite communications with Wi-Fi in lower Thorbritt Wi-Fi and satellite communications. On the moon, there's no satellites around the moon yet, so we're focused specifically on the Wi-Fi. That's fascinating because I don't know if people would realize very casual folks would realize that Wi-Fi is the backbone of a lot of the communications that we're talking about, these very advanced communications, which is, I don't know, I wouldn't have thought that. But it's interesting to hear that that's what we would be using. I imagine it would also enable, in my mind, going back to the idea of applications, just a lot of easier development work, maybe off the shelf application use, because Wi-Fi is such a known commodity and people know how to develop with Wi-Fi. Right. But in the space industry, it's new. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. But you're right that it will be as if you are using Wi-Fi on Earth with our products and services. If you're inside a space station, for instance, everything needs to be Wi-Fi enabled these days, almost everything. So your payloads, experiments, and then inside and outside of space stations basically are that there would be a SoulStar hotspot inside if you had our equipment inside and outside. We would take the Wi-Fi outside as well. But it just doesn't exist yet. The only Wi-Fi so far has been on the International Space Station. I should say commercial Wi-Fi equipment that's built specifically for the space environment, the Rad Hard version. NASA's done a good job with Wi-Fi on board. They've used off-the-shelf modems that they're using inside. And in now-side, they have Wi-Fi outside. They've really created a good path to where the next step, which is building Wi-Fi equipment that is specifically built to last in space in low Earth orbit or around the moon or on the lunar surface. So it's taken some time for people to get used to. But we tell everybody, make your payload Wi-Fi enabled. Yeah, why not? At this point, it's so fascinating to be able to do that. That is just so neat. Again, it's just when I think of space, Wi-Fi is not often the first thing that comes to mind. But again, it makes a lot of sense given the way things are moving in the commercial world also. Plus the demands of, you know, I think just the watching public, people's customers of just what they're expecting, I imagine not just the applications, but even just streaming video as things are happening, you know, as things are getting deployed. I imagine that would enable that as well. Right. Yeah, we're working on two different products to provide the internet. And one is a broadband, which we call Slayton, again, named after the astronaut. And we have a narrowband space communicator called Deak. I love this. For DeakSlaying. I love this. The great thing about our technology is that it's a core technology that can be applied to pretty much anything that you're trying to do in space development. So for instance, it will not be ready things remotely and making things happen in space remotely from Earth using basically a secure internet connection. One question I love to ask folks like yourself who are leading these fantastic companies that are doing just, I think things a lot of us didn't think were even possible not that long ago, is you're already building the future. You've been doing that for some time. When you think about the long-term future, and again, the outer net is still being worked on and that is going to really transform a lot of things. But when the outer net is more or less up and running and the vision that people have at least of 1.0, I suppose, what's next? What is Solestar going to be working on after that? We're just at the beginning of the industry getting used to having the capability that we're going to provide. But I can say that our products and services can be used in so many applications. Isams, the buzzword these days, and if you have our Wi-Fi devices on board both spacecraft, then they don't have to touch each other necessarily to communicate with each other when they get close. Space tourism can use them just like you're using Wi-Fi on Earth now. We have voice comb capabilities, so we basically can have a pay phone, a little board of space station, and then just the experimenters on Earth. Charlie Walker is one of our advisors. He's the first commercial astronaut. He basically says, if you would have had what we had, it would have been so much better because he was on the space shuttle and operating an experiment. He had almost zero communications with this operations team on Earth because he just didn't have that type of bandwidth or availability back then. He would have to record his problems and everything. And then at nighttime when people were sleeping, sent his data down to the crew, and then he had like 10 seconds to talk to them the next day or whatever. But anyway, so he's just very supportive of what we're doing and really understands the applications. It is amazing how much this kind of capability is really going to transform, especially operations in orbit, but also beyond that. It's technology that we definitely take for granted on Terraferma, but the idea of it being deployed on orbit and beyond is truly remarkable. So I don't want to add all downplay that. I think it is just absolutely incredible. So Brian, I'm so fascinated by what you all are building, so thank you for telling me more about it. Before we wrap up, if there's anything that you wanted to mention, I want to make sure I give you that chance. So, Solestar, we have been awarded six contracts from past few years from NASA as well as the Space Force. And so we're busy building our first products now. It's nice to have to leverage government research money to make our product development more efficient. And we will, we are working on DEEC, the narrowband space communicator. And our plan is to have that ready to fly in 2025. Solestar, we're not building our own satellite networks. There's no reason to do that because there are hundreds of commercial satellites already in orbit. And so we are, the first company actually leveraged those satellites, which were built to provide satellite services on Earth and on aircraft. And we're repurposing those satellite constellations to provide on orbit communications, leveraging billions of dollars of existing infrastructure, and then building our products and providing our services using the existing infrastructure. It's a very smart way of doing things, so it makes a lot of sense. Not everybody has to have their own constellation up there. Thank you for that clarification, Brian. I appreciate that. And again, all the very best, especially as you all work towards 2025. I'm sure things are super busy for you all right now, but also very exciting. So that's really cool. Thanks a lot, Maria. Very nice meeting you. We'll be right back. Welcome back. For our last story today, this is really just a call for you to click a link in the show notes to watch a video if you haven't already seen it. It's of the space pioneer Tianlong 3 rocket, which is space pioneers two stage rocket that is heavily inspired by the SpaceX Falcon 9, showing what happens when a static fire test of the first stage accidentally becomes a launch. Test haps and anomalies are part of the game and guests I've interviewed in the past who operate or build test stands have all kindly reminded me simulations are great and all, but the really good learning happens when you test. The reason this video is really harrowing is this test stand appears to have been awfully close to a populated area spewing an awful lot of propellant into the air before hitting its apogee and crashing back down near the city of Gong Yi in Hanan, South Central China. Space pioneer for its part said and I quote the test site is far away from the urban area of Gong Yi, but I guess far away is relative as ours Technica zone Eric burger did the math on the actual distance involved here hats off to him saying apparently the test stand is less than a kilometer from a village and about five kilometers from Gong Yi's downtown. Miraculously no one was hurt and space pioneer blamed a structural issue with a test stand for the accidental launch. And no if you are remembering us covering a story an awful lot like this. No, this is not that same story about a rocket nearly landing on a village in China complete with people running away from their lives. That was on June 22nd in Xijiang in Sichuan involving a booster from a long March to see this time with the Changlong three anomaly in Gong Yi. There were a lot of videos of this posted online and a lot of them show the first stage falling to the ground as filmed from apartment building balconies over the rooftops of other buildings. I don't know about you, but if I can see apartment buildings between me and the falling rocket that rocket is just way too close to other people. That's it for T minus for July 1st 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. 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. Also, you can fill out the survey in the show notes or send us an email to space@n2k.com. Our privilege 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 at N2K.com. This episode was produced by Alice Carruth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We are mixed by Elliott Peltzman and Trey Hester, with original music by Elliott Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Our executive editor is Brandon Karpf. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilpey is our publisher. And I'm your host, Maria Varmausus. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [MUSIC] [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC]