(Tip of the) Chapeau to CHAPEA

I'm guessing a lot of folks at NASA are also taking some time off over the next two days for the July 4th holiday, because a lot of news updates came in late yesterday. Smart move on their part. So before you prep the meat for the smoker/double check, you have enough fuel for the grill/digout, your best stars and stripes festive wear/make that last minute Costco run, we'll take a look at what NASA just sends on through. "T-minus, 22nd is the LOS, we need to go for the floor." Today is July 3rd, 2024. I'm Ria Varmausus and this is T-minus. Fireflies standing down on Alpha 5. Visa taps Pesat for a 6G lab in orbit. Chapea's first mission is set to complete. And today's interview is with Sanjameda and Michael Malamacy, two members of the Terrapin Rocket Team, which is the University of Maryland's rocketry team that won this year's Spaceport America Cup. Stay tuned for that. It's Wednesday and it is our last daily show this week before the holiday, more on that later. So here is your intel briefing. A quick update first on the expected launch of Firefly's noise of summer mission yesterday evening. Firefly posted a note on their social media a few hours before the launch window saying they had "decided to stand down on today's Alpha Flight 5 launch to give the team more time to evaluate data and test systems from the first attempt. We'll work closely with the range and our NASA customer to determine the next launch window. As soon as we have more information, we'll be sure to let you know. The European Space Agency selected TESSAT for a 6G satellite precursor under its ARTES space for 5G, 6G and sustainable connectivity program. This project, the 6G Laboratory in Orbit or LENO, will create a 16U CubeSat as its in-orbit laboratory in low-Earth orbit and will explore end-to-end connectivity and integrate satellites into terrestrial mobile networks. The goal is to enhance the technological potential of Europe's digital and aerospace industries and enable unlimited global internet access through seamless network availability. This project lays the foundation for future communication technologies, establishing space-based communication hubs with extremely high data rates for Europe's digital future. And as I hinted at the top of the show, a bunch of NASA updates came in over the wire late yesterday, so let's go through what those are. One, yet another NASA contract for launch services goes to who else but SpaceX. This time, it's for the Compton Spectrometer and Imager or COSI mission, which is set to launch in August 2027. And now its ride to space from Cape Canaveral will officially be on a Falcon 9. NASA's press release says the COSI space telescope is, and I quote, "a wide-field gamma-ray telescope which will study energetic phenomena in the Milky Way and beyond, including the creation and destruction of matter and antimatter and the final stages of the lives of stars." That just sounds really neat. Second announcement, the very first Chapea crew, who have been living in a 1700 square foot 3D-printed Mars simulation habitat at NASA's Johnson Space Center for 378 days straight, is coming home, or more accurately, stepping outside to conclude their mission on Saturday, July 6th at 5pm ET. Analog astronauts Kelly Hastin, Anka Salaryu, Ross Brockwell, and Nathan Jones have been completely isolated together, living and working in this Mars simulation for over a year, conducting experiments, growing food, dealing with real and simulated emergencies, and even managing simulated communications delays with Earth. Congratulations to this Chapea crew on the successful completion of their amazing mission. And number three, speaking of long stays. If you're curious how Butch Willmore and Sonny Williams are faring up in the International Space Station while NASA and Boeing continue investigative work on Starliner, set your calendars for Wednesday, July 10th at 11am ET, as that is when Butch and Sonny will be doing a press conference, which will be streaming live on the NASA website as well as the various NASA streaming channels and social media. I'll be taking bets on how many questions it'll take for someone to ask them about being or not being stranded. Anyone want to bet it'll be anything but the first question? Anyone? Alright, moving on. The dream of a Las Vegas spaceport just got a little bit more real with a recent FAA approval at the spaceport's planned site. The proposed site for this spaceport will first be a small airport on 240 acres about a 45-minute drive outside of Vegas. And the FAA just gave the official OK for that airport to allow small aircraft takeoffs. Maybe steps. Today small aircrafts, in the future, perhaps spacecraft. Pending further FAA approvals, of course. Space news is reporting that MinoSpace, a Chinese commercial satellite manufacturer, has raised about $137 million or $1 billion yuan in funding. A statement from MinoSpace's founder and chairman said this new money will improve satellite production efficiencies and timeframes, with the ambition to create a mass production line for satellites with a new satellite manufacturing facility in Wuxi in eastern China. According to the Space News piece, MinoSpace says the new funding will also help further satellite internet and Earth observation missions in both civil and commercial space in China. Friends of the show, the spaceport company have been awarded a Ciber Phase 1 contract through AFWORKS in order to support sea-based launch needs for the Department of the Air Force specifically. No further details on the award amount or any specific projects as of yet. But the press release did note that the spaceport company's next launch campaign will be happening no earlier than August 26, 2024. And that rounds it out for today's Intel Briefing. As we head into a long holiday, some features for you to read over the holiday and/or weekend. One is from ABC News Australia on the 60-year anniversary of the Carnavan OTC satellite dish in Western Australia, with interviews with some of the Carnavan trackers who supported Gemini, Polo, and Skylab missions. It's a lovely read and a great piece of space history, highly recommended. And another one is an update via CNN on whether or not any U.S. researchers might be able to study the Chang'e 6 lunar samples. Spoiler alert, it's looking pretty good so far. Fingers crossed. You can find these stories and more, plus all the stories I've covered in today's Intel Briefing in our show notes or as always at space.ntuk.com. And an important programming note about Thursday and Friday. Tomorrow, July 4th is Independence Day here in the United States. And we here at NTK are taking a publishing break, both tomorrow and Friday, in observance of this holiday, and enjoying some much-needed time off. So instead of our regular daily Intel Briefings, we'll have some special encoreers in the podcast feed for you. Tomorrow you'll hear our T-Minus overview radio show all about the astronaut experience. And Friday you'll see a special episode featuring my interview with the team behind a new women in cybersecurity talent study. And as always, we'll have our special extended edition show running on Saturday, T-Minus Deep Space. And this one is one you might have missed from last year, a great chat that I had with Pam Underwood, director of the Office of Space Ports at the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation. And we will be back to our regular Intel Briefings on Monday. For all my fellow Americans out there listening, wherever you are or however you celebrate, Happy Independence Day and Happy Fourth! [Music] The Terrapin Rocket team of the University of Maryland with its honu rocket took home the Genesis Cup trophy at the Spaceport America Cup, which means they are the overall winners of this year's prestigious rocketry competition. I got to speak to two members of the team, Sanja Mehta and Michael Malamacy, in a victory lap chat about their win and the entire Spaceport America Cup experience. My name is Michael Malamacy, a rising senior aerospace engineering student at the University of Maryland. I'm the president of the Terrapin Rocket team and I've been on the team since a freshman. I kind of got in and started with the payload team and did a little bit of work with avionics and eventually I was voted in as president last year and I've kind of been leading the team through Spaceport up until now. Sanja Mehta, so I'm a junior year aerospace engineering student at the University of Maryland College Park. I've been part of the Terrapin Rocket team there since I joined in freshman year of college and rocketry has been a pretty influential part of my journey here at Maryland. It's given me all my hands-on experiences, which has also prepped me for classes, helped me out at the University, so I really enjoyed the rocket team there and the Maryland environment is great. Well, I wanted to say first and foremost, congratulations to you and the whole team. You all are the Spaceport America Cup winners. I mean, I know there are many winners, but you all are like the big winners. So congratulations. That is a really incredible achievement. You must be, I mean, this was only like a week ago. You must be still feeling pretty good about that. Yeah, I'm pretty proud of the team. All of us are proud of each other. We've worked pretty hard here, but we're happy with what we have, but we're excited for what's coming next year. We have a lot of work ahead of us. We've already started, so yeah. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. All right. Before we get to what's coming next year, because that, go figure that you all are already ready for, getting ready for next year. Tell me about how it went in Las Cruces. Like, choose the consequences, as you say. It's both a little bit, really. In New Mexico, when you all are in New Mexico, tell me about what that experience was like for you. What were all the major events that led you all to the victory? Yeah. So this year was actually my first time being there. So it was a new experience to me, and I really enjoyed it. The week was full of lots of different kinds of events that were kind of like a build up to your launch today, which was pretty important. The process was super smooth. From what I've heard, they've made a lot of improvements, like using buzzers to help people not wait in the sun or waiting on for a long time. And it's been helpful to get pulled into the right times, the right places. We had safety reviews. We had podium presentations, which was really interesting to hear how the teams do their technical analysis on stuff. And we also had presentations to the judges who came around and wanted to hear all about our rocket and our various subsystems on it and all the cool stuff we did with the rocket this year. And then throughout the week, in the evenings, we had been prepping our rocket, making last minute parts, which was kind of exciting. Last minute changes to the rocket, which was a little stressful, but it was really cool to see how the team pulled together to make that happen. And then Wednesday came and we were launching it on the first day, which was pretty awesome. We were on the first teams ready. We launched on the first day. We had our process down and it was pretty rewarding to get that flight off. I'm curious, Michael, what was it like for you? I mean, I'm assuming that you've been before. So like going back, thoughts on comparing it previous years, this year, just general thoughts. Yeah, definitely. So this was my second time going out. I had a chance to go last year. It's definitely very hot out there. It's something that we're always thinking about, working in the heat and working in the high stress environment, kind of when you're out there actually launching. But it's also just really cool when you're out there, you get to see all the rocket teams across the world and kind of how they approach things differently, how they approach things similarly. And we all have this common thread of rocketry. So it's really cool to connect with people on that level, but also see how other teams maybe approach the same problem differently and how maybe they did it better than you and how you can kind of interact with that. But it's a really cool process. It's stressful. It's fun. It's a whole bunch of slower things, but it's just really great to be out there. And I got to go twice, which was amazing. Yeah. So tell me about your rocket, like the star of the show, right? Yeah. So we've had a theme here at Maryland of naming our rocket after Maryland themed animals, but in different languages. So last year's rocket was themed after a crab named Parkinos in Greek mythology. This year, our rocket is called Honu, which is a Hawaiian turtle, Hawaiian neighborhood sea turtle. So Honu features four fins. It's about 13 feet long. It is 91 pounds when it launched. It's a six inch diameter airframe. It's made of lots of composite parts. So we build almost everything ourselves and that is composite parts like carbon fiber and fiberglass. And we also built all the thin-can structure in ourselves, which was something new we haven't done before. So we've increased the amount of SRED components, meaning student research and development components, which has been pretty crucial to us being able to rapidly design things and change things without worrying about ordering parts. So I like that aspect of it. Plus, I guess the students on the team more hands on with the items. Moving up down from the bottom, we have a totally really cool airbrake system, which has been in development for three years. It uses four flaps, a student built flight controller, and it's worked surprisingly well on a few flight tests and it also doesn't work sometimes. And that's kind of the process of engineering, but it's getting better and we plan to make it even better next year. We also do live telemetry. We've been working on live video for a long time and even have a cube set paid with a lot of teams at Spaceboy have a cube set payload just because the half of the rules are structured and it gives you an opportunity to do some really interesting things with the payload as you probably saw in the payload challenge as well, which is one of the competitions they have. So yeah, that's pretty much our rocket. And of course, the most important part is it's powered by a solid rocket motor. And we actually built that rocket motor ourselves, which is the category of the competition called the SRED motor. And we built the motor ourselves and it's huge. It's 30 pounds almost it's made of this propellant that we designed ourselves called Terpal Nebula. It's based on a couple of other things and we characterized it, static fired it and have flown it for two years. So Michael, tell me a bit how actual launch went for your team's rocket. Yeah. So launch went pretty seamlessly. We got out there, we probably left our Airbnb around 3, 3.30 a.m. got out to the launch site around maybe 4.35 when they opened the gates up. We get in, most of the rocket was already assembled. We had to assemble the last few things like ejection charges and stuff like that that you can't really assemble beforehand. So we assembled all those put it all together and we were kind of ready to go at 7 a.m. And then it was kind of just a waiting game until we could get our spot in line and get off to the pad and actually launch the rocket. But so we were waiting for about 7 a.m. until we could actually start move and do things around 3 p.m. We sent out five of our members with our mentor Dennis Kingsley out to go set up the rocket at launch and they set it all up and we launched around 3.34 I think. So it was a pretty long day but it was a lot of waiting, it was a lot of nature we had to be prepared beforehand and it was because of our preparation. We were able to get in early in line that we could launch the first day, stuff like that. And a question for both of you. Michael, I'll start with you. This experience, given that you've done it before also, I mean, I imagine this has influenced your education and maybe your thoughts on your career trajectory. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, definitely. Spaceport has been such a great opportunity to kind of just, you get out there and you actually get to handle real world stuff. Spaceport's the kind of culmination of it but it's really just working on these school, I guess, student competition projects in general where you actually get to work on this long-term project that is almost entirely owned by the students and you get to kind of actually get in working with the hardware. In classes you get a lot of theory and that's really great. It builds this amazing foundational knowledge but actually getting the chance to work with hardware and actually go through this design cycle and kind of get the flex even the soft skills of managing teams and stuff like that. That's such an invaluable experience that you get from these teams and it made me actually fall in love with the kind of aspect of managing. I love the hardcore engineering. I love getting into the software reads and doing all that stuff but I also love the idea of being able to manage a team and get really cool projects done, stuff that you kind of couldn't build by yourself. You need a team around you and figuring out how to delegate and break up a project into meaningful chunks that people can work on individually. I find that really rewarding. That's something that I kind of found through architecture that I didn't find in my classes and I think it's influencing my career path to go to more kind of a systems level wall as opposed to always being in the weeds with the hardware and stuff that you do get this great experience with. That's fascinating. Sunjohn, what are your thoughts? I totally agree. I very much love how hands-on it is and how you don't always get that in class. Certainly there are experiences in class we get at the University of Maryland but the stuff we can do every single day in our workshop, how it changes from putting together parts to wrapping composite parts to playing with hardware and even sometimes maybe once in a while I'll play with the very most simple software that my brain can handle. I'm a very hardware guy but I get very deep into the leads on that side but the software is really interesting to see through sometimes. That kind of stuff where you get the most well-rounded experience, the most hands-on work really prepares you for how to think about the things you're learning in class. Class teaches me all the theory and it's super fun to apply it, to really cement it in your mind and think about how this is used in the real world. That's what this team and the experiences on the team prepares me for. It's definitely helpful thinking about all the skills you need to have a job one day. It helps with the communication of course. It's like any other team would and of course it helps with how to work through problems in an efficient smart way. Those are two big skills that students learn on the team and student teams in general and I think it's value. Any advice that you feel like you want to impart to other teams especially if they've never participated before? I know you don't want to give away the winning formula so to speak. I get it. Everybody's different but still. Any advice to people who are thinking of competing and just trying to figure out how they can emulate your success? I don't know who wants to go first. Maybe Michael if you want to go first on that one. Yeah, I can take that one first. My biggest thing for success, Sanjim and with some other members of the team who had some high-powered rocketry experience coming into college but I kind of came out there. Never seen a high-powered rocketry. I couldn't even define what it was before college. So kind of the biggest thing for me was really just leaning into doing things the simplest way that it can be done. There's a lot of standards that have been built out in the high-powered rocketry community over the past 50, 60 years and really just leaning on this kind of wealth of knowledge, this knowledge base that's been built up and finding mentors in the space who really know what they're doing. You can make a rocket that you can add complexity to it later but just getting a product that is out there and you can launch it up to the fleet and be able to recover it very reliably, that's a huge thing. And then kind of the second thing which we're super fortunate to be able to do is launch as often as possible. There's a lot of teams that go out there and they maybe will launch a couple times before they get their thing but we were able to do around four, four and a half depending on how you define it, full-scale rocket launches before we even got to the competition and just building this experience of launching these rockets and even launching even smaller scale rockets doing certifications. It's a really good experience, just launch as many rockets as possible. That's my best advice. All right, so last question for you both. This is a victory lap in different for you all and for your team. I want to make sure if there's any shout-outs, anything you wanted to say that you wanted to make sure that we mentioned in the podcast so people can hear it, your call. So this is the open forum. So Sanjay, I'll start with you since you didn't answer last one. Anything you wanted to say? Just put it out there, go for it. Yeah, we are super grateful for our partners at MDRA. Maryland Oer Rock Tree Association is our local launch partner on the Easter Shore in Maryland. They've been super supportive of our team, especially with the providing of our biggest mentor, Dennis Kingsley. He's been extremely supportive of the team of the last few years. He's taught us a lot. He's been at every single launch for us, every single competition, made sure we're doing things safe the right way and giving us amazing advice that we really enjoy having our time with him. So he's been very valuable with the team. More mentors who have been extremely useful. Scott has been our motor mentor and he's kept us safe, smart, thinking about designing our motor safely, which is huge because that's a tough task to do, but he helps us do it safely. Bryson Poski has been very helpful over the course of the year. We met him last year and he's taught us a lot about high-power rocketry experience as well. He's a great mentor, UMD supporters, Dr. Cadu, who's our advisor, and Dr. Pio, and of course all our sponsors. Awesome. And Michael, I'll let you wrap. Same question to you. Yeah. So first of all, I'd like to shout out the team members who are out there with Spaceport with me and Sanjim, so the 12 other people, but even more broadly, the whole team. We have upwards of probably 60 hands touched the competition rocket at some point in some form doing something for the team to get us to this point. So just everyone back at Maryland who helped out, who maybe didn't even get a chance. We only limited spots, so maybe they didn't get a chance to go out there, but hopefully they saw their work. They saw the fruition that it came out. And yeah, just shouting out everyone on the team. They all did a great job. And it's really a team thing and we couldn't do without any single part. Well, awesome. Thank you. And again, congratulations to you and the whole team. What a wonderful accomplishment for you all and best of luck next year also. Thank you so much for speaking to me today. And again, congrats. [MUSIC] We'll be right back. [MUSIC] Welcome back. Crews spending time in space can bring just a few personal effects with them, but honestly, not very much. So, what have NASA astronauts in years past done to celebrate holidays like, oh, I don't know, the Fourth of July? NASA knows we all want to know. So they've helpfully rounded up July 4th observations for missions going back to 1982, which was the very first time the United States had astronauts in space during the July 4th holiday. Did you know that? I didn't. On July 4th, 1982, there were three space shuttles in transit on that same day. First, the Columbia touched down to conclude STS-4, the crew of which were then greeted by President Reagan in a ceremony held in front of the space shuttle Enterprise. And then, again, this is all same day, President Reagan also gave the signal for the shuttle carrier aircraft carrying the Challenger to take off for its flight to Kennedy Space Center. All of that 42 years ago. Pretty neat day in space history, honestly. So what about American crew aboard the ISS? How have they celebrated the July 4th holiday? Patriotic songs played? Check. Good wishes sent home to be played at major events? Of course. What about July 4th celebrations on the ISS? Yes, tiny American flags, as you might imagine, do make appearances, especially in the cupola. Patriotic clothing seems to have been the go-to for a number of astronauts, not just stars and stripes on the socks, but red-striped pants or shirts with coordinating blue elsewhere. So I have to admit, the strong red stripes do tend to give a bit of a "Where's Waldo" look. Anyway, one of my favorite observations of July 4th actually is Karen Nyberg's patriotic cookies that she iced to look like tiny flags. So the US flag and a tasty treat in one, what is more July 4th than that? For Independence Day tomorrow, we have, for the first time since 2006, six Americans aboard the ISS during the 4th. Though in this case, they all arrived with three different rides. Three via Crew Dragon, one by Soyuz, and two by Starliner. I hope they all have a wonderful Independence Day. They'll be passing over the United States in the wee hours of the morning for most of us in the lower 48. So they won't see you if you wave from your afternoon backyard barbecue, though I guess if your party goes super late then perhaps they'll see your fireworks. That's it for T-minus for July 3rd, 2024, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.entuk.com. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. You can email us at space@entuk.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's 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 Alice Carruth, 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 Kilpie is our publisher, and I'm your host, Maria Varmasus. Thanks for listening everyone, we will see you back on Monday for our Intel briefings in the meantime. Have a wonderful July 4th holiday. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [MUSIC]