Space Jams.

[MUSIC] The future of space science missions in the United States are firmly set on the moon and Mars, with Artemis leading the way for all missions by NASA. And you can almost be forgiven for forgetting that there's so much more in our solar system and beyond that we need to explore. Thank you, Issa, for grounding us, or should we say launching us? And announcing potential missions to asteroids and reminding us that juice is ready to be eaten to Jupiter. More on that later. [MUSIC] Today is July 16th, 2024. I'm Maria Varmazos, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] Issa introduces the Ramseys mission to Apophis. Bay Systems Command rolls out CODA. KBR agrees to purchase LYNNQuest for $737 million. And our guest today is music composer Amanda Lee Falkenberg. Amanda will be sharing details about her moon symphony with us later in the show. So definitely stick around for that chat and to hear her beautiful music. [MUSIC] Happy Tuesday, everyone. Let's dive into today's Intel Briefing. And we're starting with some science mission updates now from the European Space Agency. First up is the news that Issa has started preparatory work for its next planetary defense mission called the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety, or Ramseys for short. For context, in 2029, the asteroid Apophis will safely pass near to Earth, a 32,000 kilometer pass by. That is so close, it will be visible to the naked eye for many of us in Europe, Africa, and Asia. So mark your calendars for April 13th, 2029 for this once in a five to 10,000 year phenomenon. And Issa's Space Safety program announced their support for Ramseys, which would study Apophis, not by slamming into it all revenge of the dinosaurs style as Dart did, but by accompanying Apophis during its earthly flyby to see how it is affected by Earth's gravity as it goes along. Usually if we want to study asteroids, we have to send our spacecraft way out into space, so it is awfully convenient when one comes to call like Apophis will. And Issa wants to take advantage of that. The Ramseys mission will need to be launched by April 2028 to make sure it's ready for Apophis, and this mission is not a sure thing just yet. While the Issa's Space Safety program has given Ramseys its blessing and initial prep work with existing resources has kicked off, Issa's ministerial council meeting in November 2025 has to formally support the mission in full for it to happen. So get those conversations going now. And mark your calendars for the flyby of juice. Issa's Jupiter IC moons explorer, also known as juice, will return to Earth in August. Flight controllers will be guiding the spacecraft first past the moon and then past Earth itself sometime between the 19th and 20th of August. This breaking maneuver will take juice on a shortcut to Jupiter via Venus, because of course, that makes sense. Thank you, orbital mechanics. It's the first ever double gravity assist maneuver, and it will change juices speed and direction to alter its course through space. Yes, we are eating juice to Jupiter. And during the flyby, Earth will bend juices trajectory through space, breaking it and redirecting it on the course for a flyby of Venus in August 2025. From that moment on, the energy boost will begin with juice being whizzed up by Venus and then twice by Earth, a trajectory that Issa is calling the space exploration equivalent of drinking three back to back espresso. What it all means is that juice is taking the scenic route, using the gravity of other planets in our moon to carefully adjust its trajectory through space to ensure that it arrives at Jupiter with the right speed and the right direction. Very, very cool. And yesterday it was rumored, and today it's confirmed, that Italy's Leonardo is working with Francis Tellus and Airbus on a new collaborative space strategy. Leonardo's chief executive, Roberto Cingolani, confirmed, we are strongly active in catalyzing large European alliances. Now we are working hard with Tellus and Airbus on new strategic visions in space. The companies are said to be exploring their overlapping satellite activities. Any negotiations between Airbus and Tellus Elenia space would need the backing of the French and Italian governments. US Space Systems Command has rolled out its new automated consolidated operational data archive system, also known as CODA. CODA is designed to provide a comprehensive data driven picture of the space environment, enabling space operators to make informed decisions and react faster to potential threats. Space Delta II approved CODA's operational trial period, which will assess the system's ability to integrate data streams from the AFRL's wide area search telescope system for wide area sky surveys, and the commercial company XO Analytics into a standardized workflow. The milestone was achieved through collaboration between Space System Command's Cross-Mission Data Branch, the National Space Defense Center, Space Delta II Squadrons, and L3 Harris. KBR has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire LinQuest Corporation. LinQuest is an engineering data analytics and digital integration company that develops and integrates technology solutions across space, air dominance, and connected battle space missions. KBR has agreed to purchase LinQuest for $737 million, and KBR will use a combination of cash and existing debt capacity to fund the transaction, which is expected to close in Q3 or Q4 this year. Astrobotic has completed a summer long test campaign for its V-SAT optimized for lunar traverse, also known as VOLT. VOLT is a specialized lunar rover equipped with a vertical solar array designed to drive across the moon and harness solar energy. VOLT's mobile rover base underwent testing in the simulated lunar operations lab, known as SLOP, at NASA's Glenn Research Center. The tests demonstrated the vehicle's stability, gimbal functionality, and sun tracking capabilities on an inclined bed of lunar regolith simulant. The first unveiling of the entire VOLT engineering model is planned for late October. And when you tether multiple power-generating volts together, you get a power grid, which Astrobotic is calling its, as you might imagine, "lunar grid." Astrobotic plans to deploy and demonstrate elements of its lunar grid on the lunar surface, no earlier than mid-2026, with the goal of the first operational lunar grid by 2028 at the moon's south pole. Redwire has secured a follow-on order to develop and deliver additional rollout solar array wings known as ROSA for Telus Elenia Space's Space Inspire satellites. The follow-on order increases the total number of ship sets that Redwire will deliver based on its existing agreement with Telus Elenia Space, which was announced last month. Israel's Creation Space has launched the Expand Accelerator Program to support five startups that are specifically developing technologies for sustainable exploration and settlement of the moon and Mars. The program creators say that they're focused on dual-use technologies and open to solutions that benefit both life on Earth and pave the way for our sustainable future in space. The Apsstar 6E, a satellite launched by China in January 2023, has officially come online. It is China's first all-electric propulsion telecommunications satellite, and it officially commenced operational services following an in-orbit and ground system technical review, all this according to its developers at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. The Apsstar 6E satellite is the first telecommunications satellite to achieve fully autonomous orbit transfer from the Earth orbit to geostationary orbit. And this last story sounds a little bit like a plot line from "For All Mankind" season two, or maybe it was three. Italian scientists have reported that there's evidence for a sizable cave accessible from the deepest known pit on the moon. It is located at the Sea of Tranquility, just 250 miles from Apollo 11's landing site. This pit, like the more than 200 others discovered up there, was created by the collapse of a lava tube, and the findings suggest there could be hundreds of pits on the moon and thousands of lava tubes. Such places could serve as a natural shelter for astronauts, protecting them from cosmic rays and solar radiation, as well as from micro meteorite strikes. Yep, Hollywood's predicting the future once again. And that's it for our Intel briefing for today. Hey, do you think you have what it takes to run a spaceport? Easy peasy, right? Nah. Check out the job listing for the head of future air and space at Spaceport Cornwall in the selected reading section of our show notes. You'll also find links there to further reading on all the stories that we've mentioned throughout the show. Hey, T-minus crew, if you are just joining us, be sure to follow T-minus Space Daily in your favorite podcast app. Also, if you can do us a favor, share the intel with your friends and coworkers. Here's a little challenge for you. By Friday, please show three friends or coworkers this podcast. A growing audience is the most important thing for us, and we would love your help as part of the T-minus crew. If you find T-minus useful, please share the show so other professionals like you can find it. Thank you so much, everybody. It means a lot to me and all of us here at T-minus. [Music] Our guest today is musician and composer Amanda Lee Falkenberg. Amanda is on a global tour sharing her moon symphony. I talked to Amanda while she's in Chicago preparing for the latest performance of her work, and I wanted to ask her more about what inspired her work. The Moon Symphony is a very, very big passion project that's been in development for the last seven years, and I stumbled across the concept sharing right in my piano concerto, which was called Crossing of the Crescent Moon. That's how I found out about these extraordinary worlds just through some research of ancient symbolisms of crescent moons. Then I stumbled across this website that said 10 of the weirdest moons of our solar system. They are very weird, to be fair. Absolutely fascinating. I'm like, "Well, we need music for these moons." I was like, it felt like a lightning bolt had gone through me, and I just could not wait to get started on this new project, which became the Moon Symphony, and that's where we are today. Oh, that's amazing. I know you're joining me from Chicago right now, so you're touring the world. I mean, you're doing all sorts of cool things right now with the Moon Symphony. Tell me what you're doing right now. Yes, so I am in Chicago. This is my first time here ever. It's a gorgeous spot of the world. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is about to perform a sweet version of the Moon Symphony. The Moon Symphony is a choral symphony, and Marin Olsopp is performing what we call the symphonic, the orchestral version of that. It's super exciting. I had my first rehearsal in a couple of weeks time with them, but yes, so we have visuals that will be displayed on the lawns at the Reveni Music Festival that will accompany this symphonic suite, the Moon Symphony Suite, and I'm so happy to say that the scientists that I consulted with during the creative process are all flying out to be part of this milestone moment for the moons. Like I said, this has been a seven-year project in the making, and these scientists have been there from day one with me. I mean, as soon as I recognized, but very early on in the project, that the science was going to be a huge part of the creative process, I call them, you know, it's the moons symphonic family of scientists, you know, so we've just been in this from day one, and here we are having the first live performance. I wanted to ask first about that collaboration with the scientists. I'd love to hear more about, like, I mean, a seven-year process. I mean, a lot of it was you, obviously, but like working with these scientists, and that collaboration must have been fascinating, and then I want to hear about Lunar After, so we'll do one and then the other. Well, I think it's worth just sort of pausing and saying there are so many levels of inspiration that's wrapped into this project, and yeah, so many tentacles, and one of which is the science element to it all. You know, I didn't set out initially with the science element in mind. I'm a film composer. I know the power of music to story tell, and that's really, once I stumbled across these moons, I felt this emotional connection to their worlds, and I'm like, I know how to put this into a musical landscape, so that more people could learn about them because they were new concepts to me. They were new stories that I hadn't been exposed to, and I thought, well, being a teacher at heart, how can I, you know, amplify their worlds? Well, music, and putting emotion to their stories as well, is it can be a very powerful combination, and so that's how I set about, but during my research phase, I was stumbling across a lot of science, which I felt could not be ignored, and I was quite excited about it. I honestly felt like it was tapping me on the shoulder saying, hey, can we be part of this moon's thing that you've got going on? And then that's when I recognised I needed a choir to sing this science that I was discovering. So I set about the research, and this is where it kind of got interesting, and I said to my husband, I'm like, I'm finding lots of inconsistencies on this internet about, you know, their properties and terrains, and I said, I need to consult with like a science specialist, or I didn't know they were called planetary scientists, or a moon expert, that's what I said, a moon expert. A moon expert, yes. A moon expert. And so I started googling this particular gentleman that I kept coming up across, and he looked like quite the character dressed in like Eskimo gear and talking about one of the moons I had decided to write about Europa. I found him eventually, I found his email, and I said, oh, turn to my husband, oh, he's from NASA. And it was one of those emails that you kind of type your message, it's like the black hole emails, and you never know if it's going to reach them. And so I just sort of crafted this vision, and I hadn't even written music at that point, and I explained to him about the science and these moons and whether he'd be willing to talk with me. I told him the vision about a world premiere at Royal Albert Hall and Walt Disney Concert Hall, and he got responded to me seven days later and said, Amanda, your project sounds interesting. I'd be happy to Skype with you about your questions. And so we did. And then halfway through this Skype, which was phenomenal, he turned to me at one point and he said, I think the scientists would be really interested in your project, Amanda. And I said, I said, really? He said, oh, yes. It's so different from what I'm sure the emails they normally get. I'm sure that was delight. He probably was like, is this real? I bet he was delighted. Yeah. He has gone on record to say that. When I went, we were invited to, I was invited to Caltech and NASA in 2018 to deliver the project to this room of scientists, which was just so dreamy. And before he introduced me to the scientists, he said something along the lines of, you can imagine being a planetary scientist, a leader of a multi-billion dollar space mission. I get a lot of emails in my inbox, but this particular one was quite interesting. So yes, you are right with that. I could totally see that. He's like, wow. But what a wonderful path that set you all on. When you were crafting all of this, gosh, I mean, how do you pull in the science while also building a world of emotion? And how do you do all that? That is a lot to work together. I think that's where I drew upon my wealth of experience, well, my experience as a film composer, because for me, it's a very strategic process, which is you get given a script. You have the story and I will never go into my music story until I've, I call it my incubation period, where I've basically absorbed all the characters and I've understood the plot and the emotional landscape. And that's exactly how I proceeded with this project. And I absolutely, that sounds like a three point process. I would spend two to three months researching the science of these worlds. Then once I felt that I'd penetrated as, and marinated as much information as I could, it would be the big announcement in the household to husband and cats, right? I'm going into my studio to compose this stuff. And it's Yoruba's turn. That's exactly, it absolutely was like that. That was probably the hardest part, like just really tapping into the emotional integrity of these worlds and really making sure they had their own different personality and all that kind of stuff. It's just always tricky. I mean, there was, there was a time there with Titan, Moon Titan, where I had spent seven days, eight hours a day working on what I felt was a direction for Titan. And then by the seventh day, I turned to my husband and said, no, it doesn't resonate with me. I'm scrapping everything. I'm starting from scratch because if I'm not resonating with it, how on earth can I expect others? So, of course, yeah. That is the core of art right there, really, truly. Yes. Thank you. Yes. I mean, I really, I really, I'm very passionate about that. And I mean, and because actually at the end of the day, you know, if you're not happy with it, why do you even bother, you know, investing that time and energy? I mean, you can, and you can't control how other people are going to resonate. Like that is out of your, your world, that you can try and govern as much as possible your emotional response to what you are crafty. And that's what I've always been really passionate about as an artist is I'm sure you are as well. And so that's what happened. And then after I finished composing the music, and it really had to feel, I love John Williams' word, he says, inevitable with all these things and, and melodic identifications that he crafts. And I've really latched onto that. I'm like, it felt inevitable. And once I knew that feeling, I would go, wow, we're done. Time to move on to the next moon. But, but then the other point was, was the poetry, was the libretto. And that was also a huge joy, because I would then take my, an mp3 of what I'd crafted, and then go and sit with my science books and listen to the melodic material and go, okay, now it's time to save that part of the science and put that in there for that scene. And then put the poetic spin on it, which I loved. It was such an enjoyable process. So, and I think there was only like two days that I thought, maybe I should hire librettist or like, and then I thought, no one's going to know this project as much as I do. There's not a lot of information about these worlds. And so I said to my husband, I think I can do this. I'm just going to try and do this. And it was such an, it was so enjoyable, honestly. I loved every aspect of the, the crafting of this. And, and you know what, I knew it wasn't going to last forever. Like two or two years later, I was done. So I just wanted to really, really indulge in that the beauty of crafting the whole symphony. And we'll be sharing my full chat with Amanda on our Deep Space episode this Saturday. So make sure to tune in and listen. We'll be right back. Welcome back. And we're switching gears now from symphonies to hip hop. Let's go back in time a sec. In the summer of 1997, my friends and I were glued to MTV watching this brand new music video with hip hop legend Missy Elliott dancing in an inflated trash bag suit and a bedazzled bike helmet, all while filmed with a fisheye lens. The video and the song felt so cool and so alien. It was like a fever dream that summer, just iconic. So maybe that's why NASA decided to send it out into space, making it the first hip hop song to go interplanetary. An inspirational message and lyrics from the song, The Rain, Super Dupa Fly by Missy Elliott were beamed to Venus via NASA's Deep Space Network on Friday. NASA's Brittany Brown, Director, Digital and Technology Division, explained that both space exploration and Missy Elliott's art have been about pushing boundaries. Missy has a track record of infusing space-centric storytelling and futuristic visuals in her music videos, so the opportunity to collaborate on something out of this world is truly fitting. Called it, the song traveled about 158 million miles from Earth to Venus, transmitting at the speed of light, taking nearly 14 minutes to reach the planet. The transmission was made by the 112 foot wide Deep Space Station 13 or DSS-13 radio dish antenna. So why did they send this to Venus? Well, because it's the artist's favorite planet. Missy Elliott said, "I chose Venus because it symbolizes strength, beauty and empowerment, and I am so humbled to have the opportunity to share my art and my message with the universe." Coincidentally, the DSS-13 that transmitted the song is also nicknamed Venus. That is Super Dupa Fly. That's it for T-Minus for July 16th, 2024, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. We're privileged 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 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies. 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 Iban. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president, Peter Kilpie is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Varmasus. Thank you for listening. We will see you tomorrow. T-Minus. [BLANK_AUDIO]