Is Sierra Space buying ULA?

We're kicking off this week with some surprising news released late on Friday about the future of the United Launch Alliance. We've known for some time that the launch partnership between Lockheed Martin and Boeing has been looking for a buyer. Lots of big names have been included in the narrative, but not Sierra Space. Well, not before now. Today is August 19th, 2024. I'm Alice Carruth and this is T-minus. Sierra Space is in talks to buy ULA. The SDA has awarded 424 million in contracts to York Space and Tyvek. JAXA contracts Astra Scale to retrieve SpaceJunk. And our guest today is Dr. Joni Seitzmer, Chief Technology Officer at I-Launch in Australia. They're building an amazing space ecosystem down under and Dr. Seitzmer will be telling us all about it. Happy Monday all. Maria is out for the week, so you're stuck with me. Sorry. We're kicking off today's Intel briefing with a Reuters exclusive. It seems that those close to the ULA sale have said that Sierra Space is currently in negotiations to purchase the rocket launch company. Who had that on their 2024 Bingo card? Yep, not us either. According to the story published late on Friday, a deal could value ULA at around $2-3 billion. When Reuters reached out to the ULA camp for a comment, they referred them to Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the partnership behind the United Launch Alliance. The two companies said that they do not comment on market speculation. Sierra did not immediately return a request for comment either, so it's just speculation for now. But don't be surprised if the current negotiations result in a deal in the coming months. The US Space Development Agency has awarded two prototype agreements with a total value of approximately $424 million to build and operate 20-tranche-2 transport layer known as T2TL, Gamma variant prototype space vehicles. The project aims to expand the demonstration of advanced tactical satellite communication capabilities, aka TACSAT-COM, through the tranche-2 timeframe and beyond. SDA awarded these firm, fixed-priced, other transaction authority agreements to York Space Systems and Tyvek Nano Satellite Systems, a Terran Orbital Corporation, to each build and operate 10 T2TL Gamma prototype satellites. Delivery for launch is scheduled to begin by the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2027. Japanese space company Astroscale is having a good day on the stock exchange following news of their $81 million contract with Japan Space Agency JAXA to remove debris from Earth's orbit. Following months of rendezvous and observation missions, the agreement will see Astroscale remove the upper stage of JAXA's H2A rocket, which was launched in 2009. Astroscale plans to develop the address servicer for the mission. Astroscale's J2 stands for Active Debris Removal by Astroscale Japan 2 and will use an in-house robotic arm as the capture mechanism. Over to China, and they launched a Long March 4B with the first group of Yao Gan, 43 remote sensing satellites on Friday. Official sources stated that the satellites entered a preset orbit and will be mainly used for carrying out tests on new technologies of low orbit constellations. Federal law officers have announced that they're working for investors in SPI or Global concerning the company's possible violations of federal security laws. On August 14, 2024, SPI disclosed that it would not file its courtly report for the second quarter of 2024 on time because it "is in the process of reviewing its accounting practices and procedures with respect to revenue recognition related to certain contracts in its spaces as service business." The company further disclosed that "the type of contracts that the company has identified for re-evaluation resulted in recognized revenue of approximately $10-15 million on an annual basis." Thanks to this news, SPI or stock fell $3.41 or 33.6% to close at $6.75 per share on August 15, 2024, thereby, according to legal officers, "injuring investors." At the time of us publishing this show on Friday, SpaceX launched its Transporter 11 ride share. We mentioned a few of the 116 payloads on board and have since had updates from many others. So here are just a few more for you. Speaking of SPI or Global, they had seven Lima satellites on the mission. The spacecraft vary from 3U to 16U-sized satellite buses and are designed for a wide range of applications that include data to improve weather forecasting, global soil moisture analysis and maritime shipping tracking. The satellites will also serve missions for space services customers. South Australia's first satellite, Kenyini, was launched on the Falcon 9. Kenyini is the first state government-funded satellite in Australian history. The spacecraft was built by a local team of South Australian-based companies, including SMART-CRC, Innova and Myriotta, and is part of Australia's mission helping to create high-tech jobs in the state's space sector and develop vital space capabilities in the state. Hawkeye 360 announced that three of its cluster 10 satellites were successfully deployed to orbit on the Transporter 11 ride share mission via launch integrator ExoLaunch. Hawkeye 360's operations team says it has established communication with the satellites. This trio of satellites will increase the company's constellation to 31, which Hawkeye says will significantly increase global RF monitoring capabilities. ISI had four satellites on board the SpaceX ride share. Each spacecraft has established communication and early routine operations are underway. The satellites serve both ISI's commercial and dedicated customer missions and were manufactured by ISI in Finland and ISI US. The satellites include the first ISI satellite launch for the UAE's Bayonet and YASSAP for their previously announced Earth Observation space program. And it wasn't just commercial companies hitching a ride on the Transporter 11. NASA supported the TANNGER-1 satellite by the Carbon Mapper Coalition, which was also on board. It carries a NASA-designed greenhouse gas-tracking instrument. This public-private coalition-led spacecraft will use imaging-spectrometer technology developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab to measure methane and carbon dioxide point source emissions, down to the level of individual facilities and equipment on a global scale. And KBR has been awarded a cost-plus, fixed-fee contract by the US Navy for continued development of space science instrument systems at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, DC. You can read more about that contract and find out more about all the other stories that we have mentioned in today's show by following the links in our show notes. We've also included a story on Dover-acquiring critical labs and another on NASA demonstrating its quantum sensor for the first time in space. AT-minus crew. Every Monday we produce a written intelligence roundup. It's called Signals in Space. 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 in Space in our show notes or at space.n2k.com. Our guest today is Dr. Dhoni Sistema, Chief Technology Officer at iLaunch. The innovative launch, automation, novel materials, communications and hypersonics hub program, otherwise known as iLaunch, is a collaboration of regionally designed institutions led by the University of Southern Queensland with the Australian National University and the University of South Australia. I asked Dr. Sistema to tell us more about it. It's a grant program. We are focused on space and in particular we're focused on upstream. So everything in our portfolio is basically manufactured. You can hold it in your hand and pretty much everything is intended to fly at the moment of the program. That's awesome. So it's a consortium, I believe, of various people that have put together for the Trailblazer program. Can you talk us through who it is you're collaborating with for the outcome to be able to increase their space access in Australia? So the lead organization is the University of Southern Queensland and we have two other universities in the program, the ANU and the University of South Australia. We have over 30 industry partners. We do have major defence primes, telecommunication primes, as well as numerous SMEs and quite a few startups as well. It's really exciting. What way to bring academia and commercial space industry and defence industry together to be able to work together to solve problems. One of the things you guys have been talking about recently is a new wearable device. Can you tell us a bit about that program? So that research has been undergoing at ANU for quite some time now and I launch is bringing it to the next level and we are partnering with Axio to bring that to the International Space Station. Fundamentally what it is is bringing together numerous sensors. So your fitbit just has oxygen and heart rate, right? So we're taking it up a notch and bringing the big data of multitude of different kinds of sensors and stitching it together in a holistic digital twin of human health. So step one of digital twins is gather all the data you possibly can, build that AI machine learning models. But what we're aiming to achieve is the holy grail of health. It's the predictive of monitoring. So not just how are you doing right now, how are you going to do next week? So in addition to substantial ground clinical trials will be flying on a Vomit comet as a lead up to the International Space Station. That'll be a in situ real world demo where we have the entire edge processing computer capability close enough to the astronauts where they put on, it's going to be like a jumpsuit with instrumentation all over it, talking waterlessly to the edge processing computer. And that'll be doing the predictive health monitoring. And so it's big data gathering, but then the small data is, you know, a red, yellow, green for health in several areas. That'll be brought down to the earth so that we can monitor it. And that's the goal of the demonstration. To monitor the astronaut health while they're in space, what sort of things is it you're looking for when you're looking at astronaut health with this device? So one thing to understand about astronauts is they are the most expensive human beings not on this planet. So it's more than $100,000 an hour. That's kind of the numbers we're talking about, that it costs to have them up there. So fundamentally their health is really, really important. Now, in the current situation where we have a stranded Boeing Starliner on, kind of stuck and unable to respond, what would happen if somebody had a heart attack tomorrow? Well, if they had a heart attack tomorrow, a last-minute mission would have to be mounted and sent up there. And the thing about heart attacks is if you can get to a real hospital with medical intervention, you can't live through it and everything could be fine. But it's all about time. So fundamentally, what we're hoping to do with this is to buy astronaut's time on their predictive health monitoring because one way or another, these things don't happen overnight if we need it to do a rescue. So it's extremely valuable for the future female's base flight to be able to understand the health of our very expensive workers up there. And ideally, predict if there's an adverse health event that's about to occur. Because, like I said, any time that we buy them to get them down to the earth, because I think the reality is surgery in space is going to be very challenging. So any surgical intervention needs to be done on the earth. Yeah, absolutely. I can also see some terrestrial applications for this. I can understand it's obviously being developed for those off the earth. But I'd imagine remote monitoring that is something that's very much part of what we need here on earth, particularly for people in remote areas. You bring out one of my favorite topics. And I mentor quite a few startups. And one of my sayings is aim for space commercialize on the dirt. It's hard to make money in space. This technology I'm talking about, you see the value proposition, but it's hard to make money. And you got to you got to pay people to be a business. So really, this is a perfect example of aim for space commercialize on the dirt. Fundamentally, we've got heaps of remote workers across Australia. They're removed from the net. They're removed from, you know, services like medical intervention. And fundamentally, as the controller at the top of that, you would really like to have a little health bar on top of your humans. And same thing. I do want a little thing, same, hey, this person is overheated. They are, they're passing out. They need water. They've worked too hard or in the far extreme, they're having a heart attack tomorrow. Have them checked out today, you know, because if we can solve a problem before it becomes a problem, that's making life better in Australia. And this technology is aimed really heavily at the remote workforce in Australia. So aim for space commercialize on the dirt. I love that. What a great way of approaching and solving problems that are really going to affect all of us here on earth. I know you mentioned you're working with Axiom. And Axiom have just announced that they're going to be sending up the next crew going up on X4. Is this wearable device going up with the next crew? Or is this something that's going to be happening in the future? This will be in the future. This will be in about two and a half years time is when we'll intend to launch that. So it's not that near term we did just sign the contract with them. So we need to develop the technology a bit further than before it's ready to fly. Two and a half years sounds like a long time, but it really is a quick turnaround. I believe there was another part that you guys were mentioning in that press release. Who is it you're working with on top of Axiom? Akshia recently spun out of ANU. So what's really interesting is we're working with big players like Axiom and we're working with brand new freshly spun out startups. From the perspective of Akshia, this is our partner to commercialize this within Austria. Axiom provides the access to the space station. That's what they do. But we're really building sovereign capability in terms of companies that know how to build things, companies that have products to sell on the Australian market first because it's friendly and local. But everything in space is an export market. Fundamentally, everything we're doing in iLaunch, almost all of it looks to be exportant. So I think that'll be a big win in front of the space economy in the coming years. Absolutely. Can you talk a little bit about the funding for iLaunch Trailblazer programs? Where is the funding come from and where is it you're hoping to start to invest in the future? So it's a standard Australian co-investment program, I would say. We're back by $50 million of federal government grant money. We have the universities which bring substantial cash as well as in kind. So they've got skin in the game and industry brings caps in in kind. At this present point in the program, it looks like the overall program is $200 million. And I should note that we have some contributions by CSIRO and DST in the program. So we do have other government organizations planning with us. And fundamentally, we use that collaborative money to work on our court commercialization projects. That's where we spend most of the money. And then there is, of course, our educational program. So we're developing a space engineering degree and money spent there. And of course, our partners are the beneficiaries of this work. So our industry partners are the best boys to take these technologies that we're developing and go sell them on the open market. And ultimately, we're trying to get technology and technology advancements out of the universities into the hands of industry build products so they have something to sell. And the idea is to sell it internationally, grow your businesses and grow the overall space sector. What would you like our international audience to know about your program and what you're hoping to achieve with it? We're hoping to prove is that we can get a lot done. And we really want to show this is what a government program can do quickly, effectively. And we're really trying to grow the sector with this funds. And ultimately, our industry partners are going to be poised for growth at the end of this. So we hope that the world gets to see how we do it down under and hopefully we do it well and have some amazing outcomes to show for in a few years. We'll be right back. Welcome back. We're always putting out the call on this show to become citizen scientists. So it's really cool to come across the story that a citizen scientist has made a discovery thanks to data from the NeoWise mission that recently retired. NASA's WISE, or Wide-Filled Infrared Explorer mission, which mapped the sky in infrared light from 2009 to 2011, was reactivated as NeoWise, which stands for Near Earth Object Wide-Filled Infrared Survey Explorer in 2013 and retired earlier this month. A few years ago, long-time backyard world citizen scientists spotted a faint fast-moving object. They called it a very simple name, CYS-J124909.08+362116.0, and watched it marching across their screens in the WISE images. Follow-up observations with several ground-based telescopes helped scientists confirm the discovery and characterize the object. These citizen scientists are now co-authors in the team study about the discovery published in the astrophysical journal Letters. CYS-J124909, as it's abbreviated, was not an easy spot. It was captured zooming out of the Milky Way at about one million miles per hour. It also stands out for its low mass, which makes it difficult to classify as a celestial object. It could be a low-mass star, or if it doesn't steadily fuse hydrogen in its core, it could be considered a brown dwarf, putting it somewhere between a gas giant planet and a star. This discovery has been a team effort on multiple levels, a collaboration involving volunteers, professionals and students. Want to learn more about being a citizen scientist? Backyard World is recruiting. Find out more by following the link in our show notes. That's it for T-minus for August 19th 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 it in your podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to space@n2k.com. 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. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iban. Our executive editor is Brandon Kauff. Simone Pretzela is our president. Peter Kilpie is our publisher. And I'm Alice Carruth. We'll be back next week, so thank you for listening for now. [BLANK_AUDIO]