[MUSIC] As we kick off today's show, before we dive into the headlines, let's take a quick moment to commemorate an interesting milestone. The Federal Aviation Administration says that they have officially authorized 800 commercial space operations since 1989. And since that very first mission in 1989, it took all of 10 years just to get to operation number 100. But now the FAA is authorizing about 100 commercial space operations every year. And it says by 2026, that number is going to triple. [MUSIC] Today is August 6th, 2024. I'm Maria Varmasus and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] Russia tallies up the cost to the space industry due to its break in ties with the West. Cygnus docks with the ISS. SmallSat is moving its location for 2025. And my guest today is Michelle Fleming, President of Spaceforge US. And I caught up with Michelle at ISS RDC last week to find out the latest news with their in-space manufacturing company. [MUSIC] Let's dive into today's intelligence briefing for this Tuesday. Russia's space agency Roscosmos says that the break in ties with the West following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine has cost them nearly 180 billion rubles, which is about $2.1 billion. The impact has affected collaborations such as a planned joint mission to Mars with the European Space Agency. Roscosmos also halted launches of its Soyuz rockets from ESA's Kuru spaceport in French Guiana. The Russian space industry has struggled with financing problems, corruption scandals, and setbacks, such as the loss of the Luna 25 lunar module in August 2023. But for its part, Roscosmos says it plans to make up for the loss revenues by doing more business with countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Northrop Grimman's Cygnus spacecraft docked with the International Space Station after having some initial burn issues after launch. The cargo resupply capsule, which was carrying 8,200 pounds of supplies, was captured by the station's robotic arm. The vehicle named SS Richard Dick Scobey, after the commander of the STS-51L mission of the Space Shuttle Challenger, had faced a few issues on its way to the ISS. Shortly after deploying from the Falcon 9's upper stage on Sunday, the freighter missed a planned engine burn. The Cygnus then aborted the rescheduled burn 50 minutes later, after detecting slightly lower than expected pressure readings. However, Northrop Grimman engineers evaluated the data and confirmed that the pressure readings were acceptable after all, and NASA officials announced that Cygnus performed two engine burns and got itself on course for its ISS rendezvous. Here's hoping that Sunny and Butch receive their missing garments in this cargo delivery. The SmallSat conference, which is being held this week in Logan, Utah, has announced that it is moving locations for next year's conference. After 38 years of being held at Utah State University, the conference has decided to move to Salt Lake City in 2025. Conference organizers say that the key factor behind the move is the need for larger, more modern facilities for the growing number of attendees at this not-so-small SAT conference. On the sidelines of SmallSat, Rocket Lab introduced its next-generation satellite separation system called the Advanced Satellite Dispenser, or ASD. You can read more about that offering by following the link in our show notes. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, known as LASP, at the University of Colorado Boulder, have enacted a collaborative Space Act Agreement to advance research and modeling of space weather. And if you don't remember, space weather refers to conditions in space, typically driven by the sun's activity, that can affect humans and technology. The agreement calls for a more formal and robust framework to expand space weather work in several key areas, including development of instruments, addressing aspects of space weather policy, and exploring collaboration in space weather research. Japanese Space Infrastructure Company Interstellar Technologies has raised 3.1 billion yen, which is about 21 million US dollars in its series E funding round. The latest round brings the company's total capital to 17 billion yen, which is over 117 million dollars. The company says it is dedicated to addressing global challenges through space transportation and utilization, and is developing an orbital class launch vehicle called ZERO, and a satellite communication network. India's Space Research Organization in partnership with IITH Hyderabad held a one-day AI for Space Immersion Program for startup and student research teams from across the country. The program provided interactive idea sessions, mentorship from ISRO scientists, interaction with IITH faculty, pitch workshops, and inspiring talks. And the participants had the opportunity to validate their ideas and connect with potential mentors and investors. The immersion program itself received 177 applicants, and two winners were Expans Cosmos, which is a startup based in Delhi, and Team Treeshul, a student team from Chandigarh. Work on the soft x-ray imager as part of the SolarWind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer, all of that also known as SMILE, has been completed. The final instrument has been handed over to be integrated into a spacecraft. The telescope was developed in collaboration between the University of Leicester, Mullard Space Science Laboratory, and the Open University within the UK, and several institutions across Europe. The SMILE spacecraft aims to collect new insights into the solar winds that bombard our planet's magnetosphere. NASA is looking for proposals for its CubeSat launch initiative. The program provides space access to U.S. educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, and informal educational institutions such as museums and science centers, as well as NASA centers focused on workforce development, including the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. If you want them, details on the proposals are available by following the link in our show notes. And by the way, we will be talking about student-led payload proposals through NASA on Tomorrow's Show with George Kessler, director of projects at NASA's Punch Program. And that concludes today's Intel Briefing. You'll find links to further reading on all the stories that we've mentioned in the selected reading section of our show notes. We've included additional articles, ones from the Washington Post on the asteroid Apophis, and another is an announcement from Leolabs. Hey, T-Minus Crew, if you're just joining us, hi and welcome, by the way. And be sure to follow T-Minus Space Daily in your favorite podcast app. Also, while you're there, if you could do us a favor, share the intel with your friends and coworkers. So here's a little challenge for you. By Friday, please show three friends or coworkers this podcast. That's because a growing audience is the most important thing for us, and we would love your help as part of the T-Minus Crew. So if you find our show useful, and we certainly hope that you do, please share the show so other professionals like you can find it. Thank you so much. It means a lot to me and all of us here at T-Minus. Our guest today is Michelle Fleming, and she is the President of Spaceforge US. And I met Michelle at the ISS RDC event in Boston just last week, and I asked her to sit down with me and tell me more about the Spaceforge US subsidiary. I am the President of Spaceforge Inc., which is a subsidiary of Spaceforge Limited. Our headquarters is in East Central Florida, near the Kennedy Space Center. So recently announced that, pretty exciting. As far as my background, I've been with Spaceforge now for about eight months. Just took the leadership role here a couple of months ago. Very excited about the expansion. Thank you. Prior to that, I worked for 16 years with a company called Zero Gravity Corporation. Zero Gravity does parabolic flight, does a lot of research, and in that role, I predominantly handled payload integration, worked with a lot of researchers, educators, did workforce development, and did a lot of flying. Did you go on those zero-G flights yourself? I did. I have over 250 zero-gravity flights. Wow. That's quite a number of zero-G flights. So hat is off if I was wearing one. Hat is off to you. That makes a lot of sense given what you're doing now with that experience. So that really dovetails very nicely. I can see why Spaceforge must have felt like a good fit for your next move. Yeah. It was very exciting when I first discovered Spaceforge. Loved what I was doing with Zero-G, but when I saw Spaceforge and what the goals were, bringing advanced materials manufacturing into orbit, bringing all those materials back down, and doing it in a sustainable way, where the entire satellite goes up and the entire satellite payload comes back, can be refurbished and reused. I just got so excited and I wanted to be a part of this really exciting new initiative. So I mean, you all now having a US location, I imagine opens up a lot of opportunities for Spaceforge, because I know they're very proudly UK-based, but having a US option is not bad. So tell me a bit about those opportunities and maybe the vision that you have for the company moving forward. Sure. Sure. So as you said, there are a lot of opportunities in the US, specifically with the push for semiconductor and on-shoring a lot of the capabilities, ensuring that the supply chain feeds into our national security and ensures that we have access, not only taking care of the supply chain, but also ensuring that the end product is available for US customers who need those kinds of capabilities, such as defense, telecommunications, eventually automotive. And so there are a number of different applications that we're looking at. In addition to that, of course, the space infrastructure to launch our free flyer from the US is very strong and gives us a lot of opportunities. The free flyer we're developing is compatible with, I believe it's 12 or 14 different launcher systems. Not all of them are in the US, but... But still, that's an impressive number. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm thinking whenever I think of semiconductors in the US, I think of the CHIPS Act. I imagine that may have been a very strong motivator for space for establishing a US presence. Part of it, yes. Part of it, the CHIPS Act is affording a lot of companies, a lot of opportunity. There is a very big need, not just for national security in the US, but in other allied countries as well. Of course. Of course. That makes a lot of sense. So I actually didn't know about the being established in Florida. I had had Maryland. Is that also where production is happening? Or am I getting... I might be mixed up a little bit. That's correct. We did just recently move the headquarters down to Florida. Of course, proximity to the Kennedy Space Center was a big factor in that. In addition to that, there are some manufacturing opportunities we're looking at there. We're not necessarily dedicated to Florida right at this point, but they are sort of the lead horse. And it makes a lot of sense given that's where a lot of the space activity is happening. So for potential US customers and partners, what do you want them to know? Well, we were just having this conversation, and I think here at the ISS RDC conference where we're meeting, one of the biggest messages that I would say is really... How can I say this better? So a really critical message that this conference is trying to get out there is the opportunities that in-space manufacturing affords, not just for advanced materials, but also for a number of other areas like pharma. We're seeing a lot of that push happening as well. So the in-space manufacturing is a very serious opportunity. It's not a, "Oh, that's nice." But the fact that we can really make those materials in-space, many of them better, faster, and then bring them back to Earth and really benefit humanity, that's the Space Forge model. We want to benefit life on Earth by using space and all the advantages that that affords. Absolutely. And that's one of the reasons I'm a big fan of what y'all do, because I think it's just a great mission. Anything that we might be anticipating in the next couple months or years that we could expect? Thank you. Exciting announcements coming up. Of course, hopefully most people have seen that the NATO Innovation Fund recently funded us. We are in their first round, which is very, very exciting. Congratulations. Thank you. And hopefully some other exciting announcements about partnerships and cooperation in the US coming soon. We'll keep an ear out or an eye out. I will be listening for it. Wonderful. I'm happy to share it. That's awesome. Is there anything else that we should share with the audience before we close out? Anything you want to mention? We're here. We'd love to chat with you if you're interested in what we're doing, especially if you're doing research down the road. We'd love to talk to you about our platform and its capabilities. Or if you're in the semiconductor industry, we'd love to talk to you about that as well. We'll be right back. Welcome back. So, yeah, as I've mentioned throughout the show today, last week I attended the International Space Station Research and Development Conference here in Boston. And today we've been talking about the latest batch of science and experiments heading to Low Earth Orbit. And honestly, it's an impressive bunch. We don't do enough to highlight some of these incredible research projects on this show. So, thought we'd highlight a few of the 20 that are sponsored by the ISS National Lab and National Science Foundation that have just arrived in Leo. Three university projects are included in this resupply mission. One's a project from Florida International University that will study the behavior of tiny engineered particles microscopically dispersed into a liquid form to form an active colloid. The team will explore the potential of these particles to extract energy from their surroundings and use it for self-propulsion. Results could inform a variety of applications from targeted drug delivery to disease screening, water desalination, and photothermal therapies to treat cancer and other diseases. An investigation from Boston-based Northeastern University will study the physics of tiny particles of different sizes dispersed in a fluid that stick together to form another colloidal gel. Understanding the behavior of these particles is important across several industries, including food, medicine, construction, and electronics. A project from Notre Dame will examine the physics of bubble formation in microgravity to develop highly sensitive biosensors for detecting trace substances in liquids. The team will use light to generate bubbles that can collect, concentrate, and deposit trace amounts of substances in a solution onto a surface for collection and analysis. This project builds on the team's prior ISS National Lab sponsored research, and results could lead to new sensor technology for detecting early cancer markers in blood. Wow. Two other projects are focused on the in-space production of stem cells, which can mature into different types of tissues to improve patient care on Earth. One's an investigation from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center that will test whether human-induced pluripotent stem cells grow and divide faster in microgravity. Results from that could help establish methods for future large-scale in-space biomanufacturing of stem cell-derived products, which could then lead to new treatments for heart disease, neurogenerative diseases, and many other conditions. For the second project, Bioserve aims to develop a novel stem cell expansion bioreactor and protocols for its use in space. Wow, my mind is a bit blown from going over all those. It is all just amazing research that will make a huge difference to all of us living here on Earth. We all look forward to hearing the results in the coming months. That is it for T-Minus for August 6, 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 Karuth. 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 Ventrella is our president. Peter Kilpia is our publisher. And I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thank you for listening. We will see you tomorrow. 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