NASA and Axiom Space have signed a mission order for the fourth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station. The first mission order for a private astronaut mission to the ISS was signed by NASA and Axiom Space back in May 2021, and since then, Axiom has sent up international crews to allow access to countries that hadn't previously had astronauts in space. And now they're about to do the same with an Indian Gaganyatri. Today is August 5th, 2024. I'm Maria Varmasus and this is T-minus. Axiom announces its AX4 crew. Northrop Grumman's Cygnus experiences issues after launch. Muon Space raises $56.7 million in a series B round. And our producer, Alice Karuth, spoke to Andy Atherton, COO at Celestial, on a new partnership agreement. Stay tuned for more information on that later in the show. Happy Monday, everybody! Here's your intelligence briefing to kickstart your week. It's official Axiom Space is sending another private astronaut crew to the International Space Station as early as this month. And as alluded to an hour earlier reports, this mission includes a member from India's Gaganyan Human Space Flight mission, the AX4 crew, which includes a member from the Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO, another from Poland with the European Space Agency support, and a third from Hungary, along with NASA veteran Peggy Whitson, will spend up to 14 days on the ISS. They have actually already arrived in Houston to begin their training with Axiom Space, NASA, and SpaceX, who will be launching the crew on a dragon capsule. The assigned crew members are pending approval to fly to the International Space Station by the Multilateral Crew Operations Panel, known as MCOP. MCOP decisions are made in consensus by representatives from all five space station international partners, and those would be NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, JAXA, and the Canadian Space Agency. This mission, when and if approved, will place a significant emphasis on scientific research, technology demonstrations, and the commercialization of space. Michael Safordini, CEO of Axiom Space, said in a press release that "AX4 represents Axiom Space's continued efforts to build opportunity for countries to research, innovate, test, and engage with people around the world while in low Earth orbit." This mission broadens horizons for nations with ambitious goals of advancing scientific, technological, and economic pursuits. So let's hope things move quickly for the Starliner's return so the crew can get to work on the ISS in the coming weeks. And speaking of the ISS, 8,200 pounds of cargo are heading to the orbiting lab, onboard a Cygnus cargo spacecraft which launched over the weekend. At least we hope it'll make it to the ISS. The Northrop Grumman vehicle missed its first burn due to a late entry to burn sequencing. Known as the Targeted Altitude Burn or TB-1, it was rescheduled but aborted shortly after the engine ignited due to a slightly low initial pressure state. There is no indication that the engine itself has any problems at this time, and engineers are working on a new burn and trajectory plan and aim to achieve the spacecraft's original capture time on station, which is scheduled for tomorrow, August 6th. Fingers crossed for everybody there. Rocket Lab successfully launched its Owl for One and One for Owl mission from New Zealand on Friday. The 51st Electron Rocket Launch deployed a single satellite to low Earth orbit for Japanese Earth Imaging Company's Inspector. In addition to the launch service, Rocket Lab provided a custom electron fairing to encapsulate the Strix satellite and also performed an advanced mid-mission maneuver with electrons kickstage to shield the satellite from the sun and reduce radiation exposure on its way to orbit. Satellite manufacturing company Mewonspace has raised $56.7 million in a Series B funding round. The company says the new financing will accelerate the build-out of its Halo platform. Additionally, Mewonspace says it has now secured over $100 million in committed customer contracts in 2024 for its Halo/Leo satellites. One of those customers is Sierra Nevada Corporation, or SNC. Mewonspace will develop and deliver three satellites for SNC's Vindler project, which is a new satellite constellation to address a growing market need for radiofrequency collection and analysis. Voyager Space has been selected by Lockheed Martin to support the delivery of an advanced solid propulsion subsystem for the U.S. missile defense agency's next-generation interceptor also known as NGI. Voyager will provide Lockheed Martin's NGI with a roll control system with thrust and control algorithms to enable precision control of the vehicle's orientation and a stage separation propulsion system. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has granted ASD Space Mobile an initial license for space-based operations in the United States. ASD Space Mobile is now authorized to launch and operate V, S, and UHF frequencies to support Gateway, feeder link, and telemetry tracking and control operations for the first five commercial Bluebird satellites, which are due to launch in September. Airbus has been selected by the French space agency CNES to design and build two new-generation microwave radiometers as part of the French contribution to the atmosphere-observing system, also known as AOS. AOS is a joint U.S., Canada, Japan, Italy, and France mission with a goal to optimize how we examine links between aerosols, clouds, atmospheric convection, and precipitation. AOS will have six satellites, as well as suborbital platforms in the air and on land, to provide key data for improved forecasts of weather, air quality, and climate. Canada's Space Flight Laboratory has been contracted by GHGSat of Montreal to develop two additional greenhouse gas monitoring microsatellites. The two new satellites will be identical in design and technical capabilities to the company's GHGSat C67 and C8, which were all launched back in 2023. The spacecraft are designed to detect and measure facility-level greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sources on the Earth's surface from space. And over to India now, and startup GalaxyEye Space has closed a $6.5 million Series A funding round. GalaxyEye plans to use the new funding to launch the company's first satellite, the Driski mission, to further advance its multi-sensor payload technology. They also plan to enhance testing infrastructure in the labs and use the money to support the support team expansion. And ArabSat has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Arab Red Crescent and Red Cross Organization to develop satellite solutions to enhance disaster response capabilities. The agreement will enable satellite connectivity to support rapid disaster response, assisting in disaster management and preparedness, and promptly implementing urgent requirements. The MOU also includes joint efforts to provide comprehensive solutions for IoT and Earth observation services. And that is it for our briefing for today. We've added three additional stories to the selected reading section of today's show notes. And they include announcements from Intuitive Machines and SeaOps, an opinion piece from the Guardian on how NASA has lost control of the Boeing Starliner narratives (not the Starliner itself), and a new trustee announcement from the University's Space Research Association. Hey, T-Minus Crew, every Monday did you know this? We produce a written intelligence roundup. And it's called Signals in 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 is all signal, no noise. And you can sign up for Signals in Space to land in your inbox in our show notes or at space.ntuk.com. For today's guest, our producer Alice Karuth spoke to Andy Atherton, COO at Celestial, about a new partnership announcement. Andy started off by telling Alice a little bit more about the Space-Based Solar Company. Celestial is the solar energy company for space. So our mission is to deliver abundant energy in space. After launch, the next bottleneck for human progress in space will be energy, just like it is on Earth. Like, our ability to make an impact, our ability to drive industry, our ability to drive exploration, all of that will require more and more energy as the scope of our ambition in space expands. And that's a big challenge today. And that's the challenge that Celestial will solve. I understand you guys have just had a new partnership announcement. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? We couldn't be more excited to announce our partnership with Meyerberger. Meyerberger is a terrestrial solar manufacturer. They're allowing us to scale up our manufacturing dramatically. The exciting thing about this announcement is with the partnership with Meyerberger, Celestial will be able to ramp up by a factor of 10 or more our production capacity. So we'll be able to deliver one megawatt of space stable, radiation hardened, flexible solar power modules by mid next year. So that's meaningful increase in the global capacity for space stable solar already. So right now the current manufacturing capacity globally for space stable solar, the incumbent 35 multi junction technology is less than two megawatts a year. And so adding a megawatt is a big deal. And it's a big step towards resolving this energy bottleneck that I talked about. So you just mentioned that this is going to obviously improve energy production in space. Could you tell me a little bit about the kind of companies you're working with and who's using your technology and how this is going to affect their products, their spacecraft? So it's a great question. Our customers run the gamut from satellite manufacturers to OTV operators to infrastructure builders. So the customer that was quoted in the press release is Starpath. They're building lunar infrastructure. So our customers are a wide variety of different companies. The common theme is they're trying to make a big impact in their various businesses in space and they all need power, as I said. So we're providing power to all of these different applications. And again, we couldn't be more excited. The value proposition for each of them is low cost, high scale, environmentally robust, products. I can drill down into it, but at a high level, the compelling value proposition is scale, cost, and performance in the environment. Space sustainability is huge right now. Are you seeing more people looking at solar energy as a differentiator for propulsion, for example, or trying to figure out a lot of the issues that we're having right now with maneuverability in low earth orbit? So yeah, one of our customers in particular, they're an OTV company and they're all about helping their clients maneuver their assets in orbit. And so absolutely they're using electrostatic thrust, which needs a lot of power, not coincidentally. We're absolutely participating in that part of the ecosystem. But just to clarify, when I used the word environment there previously, what I was referring to is radiation, UV, temperature cycling, atomic oxygen, all of the environmental factors that create challenges when putting together a solar product. So just the panels that are on your roof are not going to survive in the environment of space. Luckily, we've got a nice cozy little earth here with magnetic field and atmosphere and so forth protecting us from this harsh space environment. When you get away from her, if things get a lot more difficult and that's a key part of the challenge that we're solving. Yeah, I was going to ask you actually about the terrestrial application for this development because often we'll find that things get developed for space applications and we find that it really does help us then back here on earth. Is there any application do you think that could help us with our space-based terrestrial solar energy? Actually the biggest factor would be space-based solar power. So there is increasing interest in harvesting solar energy in space to transmit back to earth to mitigate carbon pollution. So when you're in space, if your orbit is high enough, you get 24/7 sunlight. Outside the atmosphere, the solar radiation is more intense. I think it's a factor of 1.4. And so it's a great environment to build a solar plant. Obviously there are challenges. It is there's launch costs, there's the environmental factors that I talked about. So there are puts and takes, there are trades to me, but there's increasing interest in this application as launch costs come down and as the cost of the components come down, we're a key ingredient in that. So we're super bullish about space-based solar power as a technology and that can create a lot of impact here on earth, mitigating carbon pollution. And obviously it's a huge market opportunity for us. Yeah, absolutely. And it seems to be across the press all the time at the moment. Everybody's talking about space-based power. What are you seeing the future of this coming up? I mean, obviously you've just had this announcement. What is the plan beyond this? It's really vertical integration, I think is probably the most interesting thing. So there's obviously scaling up. You know, we're not going to stop at one megawatt. We're going to keep going to 10 to 100 to a gigawatt. And as we think about the product, we started with cells. We developed the proprietary novel technology to integrate those cells into modules. Next step is full arrays. So being able to deliver sort of a plug-and-play deployment solution for a client, doing that ourselves or working with partners. Next step beyond that is operating the assets ourselves and selling the power that our system generates as opposed to just being a component supplier. So there is not only in terms of just scaling up volume, there's a huge array of possibilities, I guess, pun intended, as we think about vertical integration and doing more with our product. Andy, is there anything you really want to give to our audiences? So finishing thought for this conversation. I mean, I think I'd just reiterate the key points. You know, we're super excited about the partnership with Meyerberger. We're super excited to be able to scale up and really make an impact in global energy availability for power and space. That's a big deal. And yeah, we're not going to stop here. We're excited about powering innovation broadly in space across all these categories. And we're happy to be able to provide our technology. We'll be right back. Welcome back. NASA worked on the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or Viper, for years, with nearly half a billion dollars going into its development. The goal of the Viper is to rove on the lunar surface at the South Pole, looking for water ice, which is a much needed resource should be ever established a permanent base on the moon. And after many years of work, the Viper is also just about done and ready to go. But speaking of volatiles, NASA's budget has been extremely up and down in recent years, mostly down, to be honest. And that has had an unfortunate knock-on effect for many exciting programs Viper included. And that budgetary drama has led to the sad news recently that NASA had to cancel all future plans for Viper. But all that worked on Viper for it to just sit on the shelf, that seems like an incredible waste, doesn't it? And a lot of people think so, not just me, not just you. And that's why there has been a polite furor over getting the U.S. Congress to understand why Viper is such a great mission and worth continuing to pay for its development. Petitions have a mixed track record, though. And is that going to be enough to save Viper? Well, maybe, or maybe not. And if it doesn't, there actually might be another option entirely. Commercial space industry to the rescue here. These had until the 1st of August to express their interest in Viper, and apparently many of them did, including intuitive machines. Who's a dizziest lander, you might remember, put the U.S. back on the moon for the first time since the Apollo program. And they are also going back to the moon later this year. And as I said earlier, Viper is just about ready to go. Whatever work and testing remains will be up to whoever might take it up from here to pay for it. And the U.S. estimates that that might be about another $100 million. So it's not chump change, but given the investment already put into its development, it actually sounds like it could be a good deal for whoever takes it up next. Let's hope Viper finds a new home soon. And that's it for T-minus for August 5th, 2024, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. And we are always interested in hearing what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures that we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. So if you like our show, please share our rating and short review in your podcast app. Also you can fill out the survey in our show notes or even just send us an email to space at n2k.com. We'd love to hear from you. We're privileged 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 Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilby is our publisher. And I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thank you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
